Brave New World

It is definitely a good thing that we cannot remember our own births. What a traumatic experience for a human to go through! After spending nine months in a warm, cozy, quiet little space, you are forced out, without warning, into a cold, loud, hectic world, and receive a spank. I don't blame the little babies for crying their eyes out.

As I watched one little newborn get pulled out of her mother's womb, literally kicking and screaming on the way out, I thought, “Yeah, girl, I can relate.” I recently finished a very cushy family medicine rotation, and have now started a very hectic, and somewhat abusive (although sans spanking) obstetric rotation. It is not the hours that bother me (7am-5pm, or 11pm if you are unlucky), it is the working conditions that really wear me down. One of the attending doctors, nicknamed “Dr. Sunshine” by the nurses, prefers to teach by Socratic method. Well, that is a nice way of putting it. In reality, the grouch assaults us with questions about obstetric topics we never learned about, and then does his best to make you feel as pathetic as possible when you answer incorrectly. We medical students have it easy, though. Aida, one of the scrub nurses, told me that when she first started out and had not yet learned the names of all the surgical instruments, Sunshine would through the instruments across the room if she passed him the wrong one. I have had some experience with flying folders and shoes during orchestra rehearsals in high school, but thankfully I have never had to duck a flying forcep or suture scissor!

Yesterday, I was struck between the eyes with a rubber band that Sunshine had ricocheted off the white board. “Oh, sorry about that, that was an accident,” he smirked. “You know it was accidental because I would not have apologized if it was intentional.” As I looked into his ugly, watery eyes, I felt the strongest urge to hit Sunshine, hard, across his puffy face. I clenched my fist around the tube of lip gloss in my pocket and bit my tongue.

The only good to come out of the constant state of anxiety I am in during the days with Sunshine, is that I have completely lost my appetite. I usually feel ill the first couple weeks of any new job, so I was quite looking forward to the prospect of losing three pounds (albeit temporarily). What I did not anticipate was the real nasty consequence of hypoglycemia…

Let me describe the climate of the operating room to set the scene. In general, the temperature is kept very cool, primarily to discourage germ growth, but also to keep the surgeons and nurses comfortable in all their layers of clothing. Any person that will be near the patient in the operating room must “scrub in.” Scrubbing is a very methodical way of washing your hands, which entails taking a sterile little sponge-brush and scrubbing every surface of your fingers, hands and arms. The whole procedure should take no less than five minutes. Five minutes for each surgery! After scrubbing the skin off your poor arms, the scrub nurse dresses you in a sterile gown and places sterile gloves on your hands, while you stand there like a basket case, not touching a single thing. The final outfit has up-to-the-knee booties, sterile gown, two layers of gloves, mask, goggles, and hairnet. Usually, I can rely on my cuteness when I’m in a pinch, but unfortunately there is nothing cute about this uniform.

One fateful day, I scrubbed into a cesarean section. This surgery is quite routine, and usually takes less than an hour to perform. This particular case was a bit more complicated, however, because the patient had fibroids in her uterus, which tend to bleed very easily. The surgery was going fine; the baby was “sectioned” without incident. My job was to “retract,” which entails using a smooth, metal, paddle-like hook to hold open the abdomen while the surgeons stitch together all the layers underneath. So there I stood, retracting. Retracting. Retracting. Retracting….This was taking a long time. I looked at the clock. One hour. The doctors still had not stopped the bleeding. There was no hemorrhage, thank God, but just a lot of nagging, bleeding vessels that needed to be stitched. I switched hands. I looked at the patient’s belly. “Please stop bleeding,” I willed it. I was starting to feel weak. One hour and a half now. I began to feel very warm. “Stop bleeding, stop bleeding, stop bleeding….” Suddenly I felt sick. Panic came over me. I was going to throw up all over this patient!! But within seconds I realized I was dealing with another beast. “I…I need to go,” I whispered to the scrub nurse, who was quickly disappearing from sight. “I’m going to faint.” Blackness blotted up my vision until I could no longer see. “SOMEBODY GRAB HER!” I heard some commotion around me, and someone by my side as I crumpled to the ground.

I came to microseconds later, sitting on the OR floor in a puddle of amniotic fluid mixed with blood, with my head between my knees. The anesthesiologist picked me up and dragged me over to a chair. (Truthfully I didn’t really mind this part because I felt tres dramatic, in manner of Jane Austin.) People were peeling off all those layers—the cap, gown, gloves, mask…dignity… Well that was mortifying! All the doctors and nurses were so kind to me, though, and I am so grateful to them for that. They all reassured me that fainting happens to everyone, it is a physiological response to standing in one place for hours. One doctor told me that she even used to fake fainting to get out of surgeries.

Not a bad idea, I thought. I will have to remember that in the future…