I stood at a crossroads: I could toughen up and face Roberto in the operating room, or I could run away like a coward. I chose Road Number One. I would not be licked by this benthic organism.I applied a new surgical mask and boldly entered, where I came across another unfamiliar species, the circulating nurse.
As their title implied, the circulators circled the operating room like sharks. They were in charge of all equipment and generally controlled all the details too mundane for the god-like surgeons. The work of the circulating nurses was extremely pressure-packed. They had no patience for the useless components of the team, such as the medical students.
Barely had I stepped in when a hefty, ire-filled circulating nurse screamed,“You are about to contaminate the field! And your hair! It’s coming out of your cap!”Then, like Mrs. Hannigan in the playAnnie, she roughly shoved little wisps of my blond hair into my bouffant cap, mumbling under her breath.
I approached a massive steel cabinet, selected a size 6½glove, and promptly spilled the contents of the package onthe floor instead of on the sterile OR table.
“Well done,”the nurse applauded.“Let’s try not to drop any instruments into the wounds, shall we?”
Was everyone an asshole or a bitch?
The case about to commence was a thyroidectomy for thyroid cancer.“May I scrub in?”I asked timidly.
“Fine,”Dr.Albert Crumbs, the senior surgeon, replied flatly.
Instead of allowing me to pump the user-friendly dry scrub on my hands, Roberto forced theBetadine-infused scrub brush on me. The Betadine brush was hardcore: it could rip the skin right off of a crocodile. I removed a Betadine brush from its sterile packet and then started scrubbing my hands and fingers methodically.
“No, try again.”Roberto said from over my shoulder. He was omnipresent.
I tossed the first brush and started again in a similar manner. He grabbed this new brush forcefully and chucked it into the trash.
“Again.”A third time.“Again. Scrub each finger individually, followed by the hands, wrists, forearms and up to the elbows. Five to eight minutes, minimum.”
Although he was technically correct, his teaching methods were straight out of a fascist regime. When I finished the scrub, I ran my arms—bloodied, raw, ripped to shreds—under the burning scrub-sink water, fists up to elbows, allowing the Betadine to run off into the sink.
I entered the operating room, ass first, skinned arms dripping wet. A saintly scrub nurse, who had remained quiet throughout this spectacle, handed me a blue towel and tried to help me through the agonizing process of drying my arms while maintaining sterile precautions.
After I was sufficiently dry, Saint Scrub Nurse placed my gown around me from the front while Nasty Circulator tied my gown forcibly from behind. Next, Saint Scrub Nurse gloved me, and I made my way to the operating table, but I was abruptly stopped by Nasty Circulator.
“You have to spin.”
“Spin?” I was confused.
Turns out I had to perform a little two-step, ballet-like 360-degree contortion while the circulator held the strings of my gown and wrapped it closed in sterile fashion.
After all this costuming, there was no room left for me at the OR table, so I quietly hung back. Dr. Crumbs finally piped up.“What are you waitingfor? Get in here.”He pointed to a sliver of space.“Keep your hands between your nipples and your umbilicus. If yougo above or below those two landmarks, you will contaminate the field.
“Now.”Dr. Crumbs was focusing on the patient while he addressed me.“Can you tell me what this structure is?”
He pointed to a stringy white structure in the patient’s splayed-open neck. I had to quickly recall thyroid anatomy from a cadaver I had last seen two years ago and apply it to this real live patient. Things in the flesh looked very different.
The Socratic Method was widely employed in surgery to weed out weak students, but this was my first case. I allowed myself to take a moment to home in on the gyrus of my brain where this information was stored, and eureka!“That is the recurrent laryngeal nerve.”
“That is correct,”exclaimed Dr. Crumbs, and for a second I beamed, falsely reassured.
“But it took you way too long to answer a question any simpleton would have known. Get out of my OR. NOW!”
“Are you serious?”Pierced by the velvet harpoon, I was thrown completely off balance, burning inside.
“Don’t make me tell you twice.”Dr. Crumbs was dead serious.
“Wow. Okay then.”
I reversed the whole tedious dressing ritual, pulling off my gown and my gloves, my head now hanging in shame. I was so flustered I left the operating room through the wrong large double doors. I didn’t give a shit. I secretly hoped that I had allowed some flesh-eating bacteria to invade the room and kill them all.
I ran to the bathroom, this time unable to fight back the tears I’d shelved for so long. Fuck my mantra. I cried and cried, hyperventilating, and cried, cried, and cried again. I remained in the bathroom, feigning diarrhea to the annoying door-knockers. I could not allow my colleagues to see my reaction.
When I’dfinally cried it all out, I dried my eyes, left the bathroom, and rejoined my other team members like a big girl.
