Just Like Chicken

This week I moved from my quiet little ward into the operating rooms.

My ward had been small and at times boring but I was comfortable there. The staff was always nice to me and the patients were more or less happy to let me treat them, except for that one really quiet day where I spent so much time playing nurse with one patient that he started to pretend to be asleep whenever he heard me come back into the room.

I've never really been a fan of blood and gore. I'm the type of person that gets queasy and fast-forwards through the surgery scenes in tv shows and movies. I wasn't thrilled at the thought of having to stand in an OR and watch someone preform surgery right in front of me.

As you can probably imagine, it wasn't the most flawless transition.

Things didn't go exactly as planned on my first day. Or rather, they didn't go quite the way that the nurse in charge of me had planned. I picked up my scrubs on the way into the hospital and was ready and dressed by 7:10am. Unfortunately surgeries don't start until closer to 9am so I had almost two hours to sit in the staff room panicking and trying to come up with a plan on how to get out of there.

My OR nurse came in at around 9 to find us and give us a quick little tour of the place. As we walked farther away from the staff room and deeper into the OR I noticed the drastic change in temperature. The next thing I noticed was the distinctive smell and then, the nausea hit.

Everyone had finished eating and the OR had come to life. Doctors, nurses and anesthesiologists rushed around shouting orders and double checking that everything was ready. My nurse started to explain the types of surgeries scheduled for the day, my insides churned in protest.

Feeling like a ticking time bomb I desperately tried to explain that I needed to get out of there. After a difficult five minutes of arguing I was sent to the head nurse that's in charge of all of the nursing students. I tried to calm my insides down and went to present my case. Twenty minutes later I was introduced to the nurses in the recovery room where I spent the day hooking patients up to monitors and taking their vitals while they waited for the anesthetics to wear off.

Today I got to the recovery room bright and early only to find that this mornings surgeries were all "big" surgeries that would take at least 2 hours per surgery. After sitting for an hour and a half in recovery with no patients to hook up to monitors I started to get really bored.

I saw the nursing student that I'm supposed to be watching surgeries with hurry down the hall. She stopped by the sinks to grab a face mask and then walked into one of the OR rooms. Curiosity got the best of me and five minutes later I was standing next to her watching a gastric sleeve surgery.

The surgery was laparoscopic so we could see everything on a big screen. They were just beginning to cut the stomach when I went in, my insides panicked in sympathy. I felt like throwing up but then I noticed the liver and the spleen and then I noticed that it was kind of like cutting up raw chicken.

I don't know if it was an adrenaline rush or a miracle but my insides calmed down and I couldn't look away. It may sound kind of gross but I just kept thinking of chicken and steak and it made me really hungry.

The other nursing student kept checking on me to make sure that I was feeling ok. Towards the end of the surgery I told her that I was going to go out and she asked me if I was ok I said "Ya, I'm just going to go grab something to eat. I'm starving!".

After eating a quick snack we went in to see someone have their hemorrhoids removed and then finished off the day with a bilateral hernia repair.

I'm pretty proud of myself for actually going into the OR and watching some surgeries. I'm also really glad that I didn't throw up or pass out!

Tomorrow is the last day that we're allowed to watch surgeries and then its back to hooking people up to monitors in recovery.