It only goes to so deep. People don't really know what true modern marvels are. You've seen the commercials for the iPhone and things. It does quite a bit of stuff, and I'm not gonna lie, I wanted one too. It's pretty cool, but the things I saw in the operating room does a lot more for human life and is incredibly more amusing, if not fascinating.
At 7am, I waited for Dr. Baptiste in the cafeteria, not really knowing what to expect for the day. About 7:30, he walks in, asks me and 2 other girls if we were hungry and then took us to the viewing room to brief us on the patient. In the office, he pulled up a woman's files on the computer, and showed us some short videos of her coronary angiogram. Even at that moment, I was amazed. I saw her beating heart on the computer screen, pumping x-ray dye through vessels that split, branched and curved into little threads across the screen. "Can anyone tell me something that's abnormal here?" Upon inspection, I saw that one part of a vessel looked "too skinny" compared to the rest of the vessel. I told Dr. Baptiste that the dye is constricted on that coronary vessel and he told us that that particular vessel was only getting 1% of it's required blood through. She had 4 others like it and it reduces her life expectancy to 80%.
I changed into deep green blue scrubs, put on a hair net and booties, and scrubbed up. When it was my turn to come into the OR, I donned my surgical mask and stepped into a jazz filled room. There were several people surrounding a table that supported a middle aged brunette woman on her back with her eyes taped shut. An assistant surgeon explained to me the various tubes and contraptions that were protruding from her chest. Several of which were connected to the heart-lung machine. A heart- lung machine! Something that takes the blood out of your body, oxangenates it , and puts it back in to your body while you can't. I think that's amazing.
I peered over the table and saw her chest being held open with a clamp, exposing the most important muscle in the human body. It was strange and mesmerizing to watch a live beating heart, and a surreal feeling washed over my own. It made me wonder what my own heart looks like, if its healthy....Dr. Baptiste had already harvested the needed vessels from her femoral and mammary veins and was about was about to begin the actual bypass.
The heart was surrounded by ice, and the potassium solution was injected by the cardiac anesthesiologist. Everything on the moniter began to slow down and flat line. After her heart was arrested, Dr. Baptiste punched out three evenly spaced holes, flinging the punched out tissue over his shoulder. With experienced, steady hands, Dr. Baptiste took a blood vessel, one at a time, and threaded it onto each hole. Every needle went into tissue with precise spacing from the last threading. A sewing machine couldn't have done it better. 3 new vessels from the aorta. Her life expectancy was now even better than the average population. 105%.
I followed him out to talk to the husband of the patient. "Everything went fine. She slowed down before we were ready at one point, but we defribbed and were back on track. It'll be a few hours before you can see her, but overall the surgery was excellent." "Thank you doctor. That's great news. Thank you girls". He thought I was part of the surgical team. I smiled.
It was an interesting feeling. I felt good after he said that. Not because he gave me nonlegitimate credit for saving his wife, but he saw me and thought I was an adult. I know in some sense I am, but I've always worried that people won't take me seriously in a world like medicine. I'm a barely 5 feet girl much too petite in size. My cousin, who is taller than me by a lot, got rejected by many patients during her residency thinking that she's just an unqualified child.
My mom and other people told me I should be a surgeon because I'm good with my hands and I did well at the sight of blood. They were impressed that I was able to eat after watching a 5 hour long surgery.
I was just impressed by the sheer and simple genius of medicine.
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