I know this is your first time, but you need to be better, ok?

Well, sorry that last post was a little depresso.  I think this never ending winter has finally crawled into my bones and died, add that to the combo punch of everything else, and there you have it. BUT GUYS, Friday I finally heard back from two of the places that I submitted applications to! Prior to that it's pretty much been resounding radio silence all around, punctuated only by very intermittent rejection form letters.  Super psyched for these two places and the possibilities, but I don't want to jinx anything so I'll write more later if anything comes to fruition.  Fingers quadruple crossed please!

Which brings me to surgery.  This rotation has been a jumble of conflicting everything for me, so it's hard to untangle it all in the form of explanations.  I've seen some seriously cool things, and I've actually done some pretty amazing things as well!  I feel dumb constantly, and trip over myself both literally and figuratively on a daily basis (although bonus to me for only contaminating myself in the OR less than a hand full of times!).  I forget to breathe when I am at the operating table cause I am terrified of messing something up catastrophically, so I'm not sure surgery is the specialty for me as breathing seems pretty important.  I've gotten a teensy bit better with time, but there hasn't been a whole lot of cases recently so I often feel like I've slid right back to square one.  In any case, here are a couple of things:

1.  I got to watch a c-section the other day.  IT WAS AMAZING.  I haven't ever seen a baby come into this world yet, and I have to say, I was quite impressed.  I had my doubts that a baby could fit through such a small incision, and I had moments of extreme fear when he didn't cry instantaneously, and then I may have teared up a bit when the father came and cut the cord, but man when all was said and done, HOW COOL!  I also accidentally turned into the photographer for one couple when it became apparent that the dad might pass out if he stood and watched for much longer.  I felt pretty honored to help document such a momentous occasion for them, and I probably snapped like a hundred photos.  Better too many than not enough, right?

2.  I also got to watch a few cataract surgeries.  Really not the surgery for me, but still very cool.  I mean, how could it not be, you are slicing the eyeball open with a diamond blade and sucking around and replacing a lens.  Very badass, and very uncomfortable to watch.  Turns out I don't like to see sharp things in eyeballs, it's extremely disconcerting, plus it's really strange that the patient is awake the whole time.  And it amazed me that they would still move their eyes around.  If ever there was a time to hold still, it's when needles are in your eyeballs.  Hold still like your eye sight depends on it....

3.  My surgeon, who incidentally looks exactly like Doc from Back To The Future, has this habit of whistling.  Which is fine, and good, cause hell I am a whistler by nature too, but I can't actually tell if it's coincidence that he just happens to be whistling when he needs me, or if he is actually whistling to get my attention/get me to get up from my desk and walk with him down the hall.  It's odd.  He whistles, I leap up at attention.  I'm basically Oliver in scrubs.  I also respond to Hey, Student, Elsie and sometimes Julia or Other Julia.  Luckily she also gets called Other Elise, so we both feel disregarded equally.

4.  My first day in the OR I wasn't wearing glasses so I had to wear the special mask with a plastic shield thingy attached.  It kept fogging and sticking to my face, and I couldn't see anything so when I was asked a question I had to maneuver my face into the oddest angle just so I could peep through the one segment of my mask that wasn't fogged over.  I thought to myself that I was going to bomb surgery hard because I couldn't see anything to answer any questions correctly, but afterwards the scrub tech told me I just had my mask on backwards so the plastic was plastered to my face.....she told me that if I didn't want to look like such a student, I could try wearing it the other way.  So now I do just that, but my fumbling fingers and alarmed facial expressions probably still give me away.

5. When you are first assist during a surgery, they tell you that your job is basically to anticipate what the surgeon will want next, and then you will be in sync.  That's difficult to do when you don't really know the surgeon though.  Today I thought I was actually getting better at reading him, but then when he shrugged his hand a certain way and I reached out to grab the retractor I realized that in fact he was just stretching his neck, and I was just awkwardly kind of holding his hand.  Incidentally, the title of this post is what one of the surgeons told me when I was thrust into driving the laproscopic camera for the first time.  Up is down and left is right, and it rotates 30 degrees blah blah blah...and I basically sucked hard.  He gave me the boot after like ten minutes, during which I don't think I took a single breath.  It was a good day.

6.  Surgery seriously hurts your body.  It's like wonky positions all the time forever.  Why we have not evolved to a more ergonomically favorable approach is beyond me.  I mean, I guess I get it, literally, but still.  I walk down the hall hunched over with my back all rounded out after surgeries, cause standing like a board and also leaning slightly to the right to accommodate for the patients arm jutting into my hip for hours on end is really not the way to make sure you are correctly aligned.  I seriously don't know how people do it day in and day out.  That and the whole breathing thing, I'm practically a misshapen corpse holding a retractor in one hand and a suction in the other.

SO, that was still kind of hodge podgy, but it's the best I could do.  Surgery is weird.  Here is a picture of me hiding in the locker room. That is all.