I started off the day again doing rounds with Dr. Ou. However, this time I actually got to see the post-operative status of a patient I observed in surgery. He was doing really well despite having a ~5 cm tumor excised from his neck. I noticed he had a tube left inserted, which I believe is for easy access drainage. Due to the extensive vascularization of the area, these types of procedures have a high risk for bleeding and often need to be repaired afterwards. I subsequently saw many more inpatients, who were scheduled for future surgeries I hope to be able to observe.
Today really changed my outlook on surgery. I was only able to see a few local anesthetic surgeries, but I think I see everything in a whole new light. I have always viewed surgery with a negative attitude, not in the sense of dislike but with more of an ominous atmosphere. I started to develop this impression yesterday, but I felt such a small sample of observations was not enough to generalize. However, after today, I definitely get the impression that surgery is a lot more calm, interesting, and may even be fun. I do not know if this can be attributed to the entire country's attitude toward medicine (discussed in my previous entries), or if my own conception is skewed by American media. One of the first observations that led me to this conclusion was music playing throughout operations. I always imagined a tense atmosphere with everyone focusing intensely and trying to eliminate distractions (i.e. music). However, the music playing definitely gave me the sense of a more relaxed atmosphere. Everything performed seemed very routine, there were never any periods of critical vitals. Doctors and nurses had time to discuss random things and even make jokes. I never once got the impression that the doctors felt pressured.
Later on in the day, I got my first taste of trying to stay sterile in the surgical environment. Given I was only sitting in on a local anesthetic surgery and did not need to fully sterilize myself, I had to keep my hands and forearms clean. When I first put on sterile gloves, the nurse dropped something on the floor and immediately, by instinct, reached and grabbed it for the nurse, essentially ruining my sterility. Once again, I had to glove up and once again, failed. I rested my forearms on my legs, which was also an "unsanitary" place for my arms to be. I felt pretty stupid and frustrated at the same time. The idea of staying sterile is such an easy concept to grasp, but the habits I must learn or unlearn were hard to employ in such a short period of time. After finally being paranoid enough to keep my hands in the air at all times, I was able to palpate the patient's abnormal growths and get a deeper sense of what it is like to actually be at the operating table. I always thought the pressure of having a person's health at your fingertips would be much greater, but in actuality, I felt very calm and relaxed. Once again, I know it was just a simple procedure but I still imagined a lot more pressure in these situations.
Surgery has definitely been a big surprise for me. Part of the intrigue comes from everything being so "foreign" to me. I feel like everything I see is something new that I haven't learned before. Some of the easiest things in surgery, which I have never given a second thought too, can actually be a little more difficult than I imagined. While some of the harder things in surgery are actually not as bad is it may seem. All in all, I feel like I am seeing surgery as something not to be dreaded, but as a path towards a better life. Although I have still yet to see an extremely technically difficult and possibly life-threatening surgery, operating on people is definitely not as "bad" as media may lead us to believe.
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