Friendly Fire

It was just another day in the operating theater, anther lap chole. I scrubbed in with the surgeon. My role was, again, to hold retractors and cut sutures, etc., which I didn't mind. I've always enjoyed assisting surgeries, no matter how minor they were.

As I stood next to the surgeon holding a retractor, he released a flap of tissue with the pair of toothed forceps he was holding and bumped against my hand. "Sorry," he said and proceeded to the next task. As I handed the retractor back to the scrub nurse, I noticed a nick in my glove. "I think I have a nick in my glove," I told the scrub nurse. "You'd better change that," replied the scrub nurse. As I took off the glove, I saw a bit of blood right where the nick was. "You're bleeding," said another nurse. "That's a needlestick incident. You'll need to unscrub, fill out an incident report, and go to A&E to get your blood tested."

That was how the rest of my afternoon was taken up by writing an incident report, opening a patient file for myself at A&E, getting blood drawn, etc. I didn't even feel the forceps puncturing my skin and the blood on my hand may or may not have been mine. The chances of picking up diseases this way is extremely small. But to follow protocol and for safety's sake, I'll be having my blood tested for Hepatitis B and C, syphillis, and HIV, among other nasty blood-borne bugs. And again six months later.

Well, I'm not going to lose sleep over it because sometimes, shit happens. Plus, I need my sleep so I can study for the end-of-rotation exam this Friday.

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Tonight's culinary experiment: pita wrap with baba ghanouj, chicken, zucchini, roasted mushrooms, and yoghurt sauce. It wasn't too pretty, but was highly edible. I made baba ghanouj with extra garlic a few days ago and the garlic flavor has definitely intensified since. Hmmm, postprandial garlic breath...