Anesthesia

If I had been around the anesthesia department earlier in medical school, I might have considered it as a career choice.  But, alas, my soul belongs to the Internal Medicine department.  And that's okay, I still love IM. 

In the past week, I've been hanging out in the OR with the anesthesia folks.  I show up at around 6:00 in the morning, help hang fluids, draw up drugs and do whatever else they tell me to do.  "Hey med student, go get me a 20-something-or-other-anesthesia-foreign-language-talk."  Yessiree!  And then I spend 15 minutes hunting around the supply room, for what, I have no idea....but it had the number 20 in it.

You get to see some pretty cool stuff in the OR.  We all do surgery rotations during our third year, but it's a lot of the same stuff over and over.  I saw lots of gall bladders, prostates and livers last year.  Got a little boring after a while (with the exception of the day that the attending stepped out of the room on a retroperitoneal lymph node dissection and I got to be first assist with the resident and he let me use the Bovie right up between the renal artery and the aorta....sweet!).  But in just one week of anesthesia, I've seen a brain surgery, a gunshot wound trauma, a spine surgery and a bypass surgery.  Here's a brief run down:


1. The brain - pretty cool.  And, well....it does take a neurosurgeon.  While I was in the room, the resident and I were just chillin', making sure the vitals were looking good, when all of a sudden I hear sounds reminiscent of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  Oh yeah, that's the saw cutting into the skull.  No biggie.  Then the surgeon hands chunk of said skull to the scrub nurse, and there's the brain.  Hello brain!  At this point I stopped paying attention to what the anesthesiologist was doing....because there was a BRAIN - sticking out of a patient's head - and the flow of isoflurane just didn't seem very interesting anymore - because there was a BRAIN - did I mention that already? 

2. GSW (16 in the clip and one in the hole....I love Nate Dogg & Warren G) - So, some poor kid got shot in the gut.  Lost a lot of blood.  About 20 people packed into an OR with blood all over the place trying to keep him alive.  As far as I know, they did.  Didn't stay for the whole case, because I went to.....

3. Cabbage - actually CABG (coronary artery bypass graft) - it's not every day you see someone's chest cracked open (more Texas Chainsaw Massacre noises) and their beating heart right in front of you.  Well, unless you're a cardiothroacic surgeon....or Indiana Jones.  Anyhow, so there beats the heart.  Then they hook it up to the "pump," which shunts blood away from the heart and lungs and reoxygenates it and sends it back into the body, and then they STOP THE HEART.  Like, for real.  One minute it's ticking away and the next, it stops.  Flat line on the monitor and everything.  BEEEEEEEEEEP.  Then the surgeon goes to work fixing up the coronary arteries.  The surgeons usually have their iPODs playing during surgery, and this particular surgeon had one of the most appropriate surgery songs I've ever heard in the OR - I Will Try To Fix You - by Coldplay.  Cute.  I think this surgeon really likes music because as he was mucking around with the heart, he was giving a dissertation, comparing and contrasting Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift.  He went on and on about how Taylor Swift is a better musician, but is still just a tall, skinny, awkward teenage girl without a lot of stage presence.  While Miley Cyrus, who doesn't necessarily have all of the musical talent in the world, is a fantastic entertainer.  This was all done with a completely straight face....like he was lecturing on some cutting-edge cardiothoracic surgery breakthrough....except he was talking about Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift.  I love surgeons. 

On a super-exciting note, I got my first intubation today!  Right through the cords on the first try.  Made me feel better after the two failed attempts earlier in the week. 

Have a lovely weekend!