I'm All Thumbs

After drifting for a couple of months, I'm finally settling down - well, for eight months anyway. From now until the end of November, I'll be doing four rotations in Hervey Bay: surgery, mental health, GP, and internal medicine.

Surgery rotation, consisting of two weeks of orthopedics and six weeks of general surgery, started on Monday.

Having done a bit of orthopedic research in my former life, I am all over it. So when the first time I am asked to scrub in and assist in a hip replacement surgery, I run to the sink and scrub away: scrub scrub, under the nails, palms, back of hands, scrub scrub, fingers, between fingers, wrists, arms; ten layers of skin later, everything below my elbows are squeaky clean. Remembering the proper sterile technique I learned at the beginning of rural rotation nine weeks ago, I back myself into the operating theater, dry my hands on the sterile hand towel, put on the sterile gown - so far so good, I haven't accidentally contaminated anything yet by touching unsterile objects.

Then I proceed to put on the sterile gloves. Picking up the left glove with my right hand behind the right sleeve, I gingerly put it over my left fist, which is still inside the left sleeve. Tucking on the left sleeve with my right hand, my left hand slip through the sleeve and into the glove - but into the wrong fingers. As I try to get my hand out of the glove without contaminating it, a nurse says from across the room, "Dr. Young, you look like you're struggling a little bit," with just a dash of schadenfreude. Oh, she must enjoy tormenting new doctors and med students. I say sheepishly, "Yeah, my fingers are stuck." "Just take it off and start a new pair." I rip off the glove and put on another one, but as I pull on the glove, my right hand slips and touches the glove. She says to another nurse but sounds more like announcing it to everyone, "Can you get another pair of 7 1/2 please." She walks over, pulls the glove wide open, I put my hand in, she lets go, and my hand goes down and touches the edge of the drape. "Another pair!" she's thoroughly enjoying it now. After five pairs of sterile gloves, I am finally gowned and gloved. Way to go for that killer first impression! Feeling like a giant boob, I walk over to the operating table, being conscious not to bump into anyone or anything while keeping my hands in front and just below my chest.

Assisting in surgery sounds a lot cooler than what it actually involves: holding a retractor with one finger and another one with an elbow while suctioning the wound with the other hand and holding the patient's leg between your legs. The only perk is that you get to see the surgery up close, but you also have a pretty good chance of getting splattered while the power saw cuts its way through bones. But at the end of the day, after inhaling the acrid smoke from the diathermy burning through flesh, trying not to pass out from the fumes coming off bone cement being mixed, and wading through the puddles around the table, you know that underneath the acres of sterile drapes, someone will have a pain-free hip, it feels damn good. And I didn't even do the surgery.

I just hope the joint doesn't get infected. And I need a pair of comfortable clogs.