Quit that!

There are some slightly horrific things that go on during surgery, aside from the gore that you're lookin at. I think it's the scariest when patients stir around while the surgeons are working on their heads, spines, etc. Trust me, it's not uncommon to have someone start to get up. The craziest times are when the patients aren't lying on their backs (supine) but their fronts (prone). Sometimes the patient will just twitch a finger or a hand, and the anesthesiologist corrects for it accordingly, but this one guy who was prone tried to get up and extubate himself (take the tube out of his windpipe that was supposed to be delivering him the anesthesia). Apparently even though Anesthesia is watching these people's every breath and heartbeat, etc, you can't always tell when someone's gonna wake up.

Take Mr. S. I left his lumbar laminectomy for removal of a spinal mass (they cut his spine bones and took a mass from around his spinal cord) for a class, and when I came back the surgery was over. So I helped undrape the patient and stuff. But this guy had been placed in this crazy-style contraption where you first flip him over onto his chest, then strap a butt-pad onto him, bend his legs at the knee so his feet are up in the air, secure them in this metal thing, then rig it all up so that he would be on all 4's if his arms weren't by his sides. So the thing stretches out your back by putting you on your knees. So this guy has a respiratory rate around 4 (usually you're 12-20 breaths per minute), and he's just been undraped, and he WAKES UP. He starts tryin to get his tube out while the Chief and I are frantically attempting to unscrew his feet. The guy even helped move himself onto the awaiting gourney!! When we asked him about it later, he said he had zero recollection of it. And thank goodness!

Another thing I saw that I HATE to the point of queasiness was the way the 2 4th year med students were assessing comatose patients' reactions to pain. It helps you assess how with it they are or not if they haven't been responding to your verbal commands. I mean, a deep sternal rub is one thing, and pushing on nailbeds or pinching the arm another, but they twisted peoples' nipples. Like TA-WISTED them. I couldn't watch. No way am I doin that to someone.