Seeing Surgery
This has been one of those experiences which, for me, has become a slow-moving epiphany. For the most part, our experience of surgery comes as a patient, and it is all prep and recovery. That part in the middle is pretty much a mystery, okay, not true for everyone in every situation. Even when you are awake enough to know what’s going on, you really aren’t in a position to critically assess the whole thing. This is a different experience, the opportunity to step outside the process and watch the parts, see the players, see the teamwork, and the precision. I have said elsewhere: it is magic, plain and simple, magic.
In doing working with surgeons, I have learned a lot: HIPAA, sterile fields ( DO NOT TOUCH ANYTHING BLUE, touch includes brushing against it! ), what a surgical robot actually does ( different in different disciplines and no, it doesn’t just do it. ), and what different parts of the body ACTUALLY look like . ( So much less blood that it looks like in the movies.) I have also learned what healthy lung tissue looks like, what a lifetime of smoking does to your lungs, how the fabric used to fix a hernia is like Velcro, how to size the bolt used to reattach a knee ligament, what the bladder, prostate, and femoral artery look like from the outside ( though still inside the case). The operating room is a complicated place, that seems obvious, but until you stand in the midst of it, you have no idea. This is where the proverbial rubber hits the road.
To be allowed inside that environment is a huge honor; things happen, and even the smallest mistake can have major repercussions. Each person has a role, and there is an air of choreography to every movement.
So, there are pictures taken with all of that in mind. Keep in mind that I don’t just walk in and start clicking away. The patient needs to acknowledge that I will be there and it is okay. If the patient is going to be in the images, releases need to be signed. I need to be clean; I don’t necessarily scrub in, but I either change into scrubs or, my preference, for no good reason, is to wear a bunny suit. Once in the inner corridors that connect the ORs, booties must be worn over shoes; a head cover of some sort goes on; and as you get to the OR, a mask, or in some cases, several masks. And, with all of that, someone is still assigned to follow me around and keep me out of the way, away from anything covered in blue, outside of a perimeter of cleanliness.
Still, it’s magic…it’s all magic.
