Secrets from Surgery

March 25, 2008 - 1:00 PM by Stephanie

I’m not 100% sure whether knowing what really & truly goes on in the operating room between anesthetized i.e. unconscious patient and the medical staff is a good thing.

On the one hand, surgical gallery stories can be amusing and even shocking. Remember the one that hit the press earlier this year about med students performing pelvic exams on anesthetized patients without consent? That needed to go public but it was nary pleasant to read.

On the other hand, when glimpsing the inner workings of hospital goings-on via amusing tales, the sneak-peak can be a whole lotta fun.

Enter Israeli anesthesiologist The Sandman:

One night, after finishing the last of several urgent operations, I received a phone call from a very, very, very, very junior surgical resident (meaning: he started his residency that month). He was concerned about one of the patients who had undergone an emergency appendectomy earlier. He said, “The patient isn’t moving.” I then suggested, “Pronounce his death and let me get some rest for God’s sake.” “No,” he said, “it’s not that, he’s alive, he’s just not responding to me.” I thought to myself, “If I were your patient, and if I knew that you were the most inexperienced doctor in the hospital, I wouldn’t respond to you either.” No, I’m not that mean spirited, I didn’t actually say that to him, but I do get cranky at 3:30 AM when I haven’t gotten my beauty rest. “Oh, alright, I’ll be right up.

I had not been involved with that particular patient’s anesthetic, so I asked the doctor who had, to meet me on the surgical ward. I found the resident and asked him to show me to the gentleman in question. I found a young Bedouin man lying in bed staring at the ceiling with his mouth open. After noting his normal breathing and skin color, I just had to have some fun with the resident (after all, it was 3:30 in the blessed AM). “Are you sure he’s not dead? He looks dead to me, did you take a pulse, did you measure his blood pressure, and have you informed the next of kin?” The look of abject failure made me feel sorry for the kid. “Don’t get yourself in a fit. He’s alive, I’m pretty sure of that. Now watch and learn.”

Read the rest of this amusing and informative share here.

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