Today I decided to go to the main/major theater where the major surgeries take place. I was with 5 other students awaiting to see a surgery. Once we seen the patient be wheeled by we all jumped up with excitement and followed the gurny to the operating room. The patient was a 37 year old male who had been in a motorcyle accident and broke his femur pretty bad. We saw an xray and the break was jagged and was completely broke through. While the surgical techs were preparing the room for surgery and the anestesiologist was applying a spinal tap to the patient, one of the surgeons was chatting with us and we were talking about good places to go out at night and he was saying isnt it true that a black man can't swim, but a white man can't dance? And we all laughed and agreed with him. Once the patient was ready the surgeons scrubbed in and started the surgery. They first had to cover a big wound that was on the outside of the man's leg from when he fell. They did this by taking a cloth and sewing it to the skin, to keep it covered, I thought it was pretty strange. They then made an incision on the man's knee and put a rod through it. One of the surgeons was putting his whole body into it to get the rod up his leg. Once they had it where they wanted it, they made a pretty big incision on the side of the man's thigh. The surgeons started cutting at the tissue until they were able to reach the bone. You could see the bone and where it was seperated at. The surgeons were pulling, pushing and proading the bone until they were able to get it in place. Then all of a sudden the power goes out and we are all standing there in the darkness. One surgeon goes anyone got a phone light. A few seconds passed and the power came back on. They then hammered a rod down the bone and got it set. They pulled and pushed more on the leg and bone until it was set, they even had to cut part of the bone of that was jagged. Let's just say it wasn't the best sound to hear. They then placed 3 screws into the bone to hold it together so it could heal properly. Just to point out the whole time this was going on, we all heard noises that are unexplainable unless you actually are there and these surgeons were literally putting their whole body into moving the leg around. Then the power proceeds to go out once again. But was just a quick one because before anyone could say anything the lights came back on. Also keep in mind that the patient only had a spinal tap so he was concious while that was going on. I point this out because I don't know how I would have reacted to the noises and movements if that was my leg. The man did stay calm the whole time so cudos to him. Once the screws were in place the surgeons placed the muscle and tissue back in place and started suturing him up, before I knew it they had him closed up and started cleaning up.
Once the surgery was complete we had little over an hour before we were going to leave for lunch. A couple people went to minor theater and a couple of us stayed to go find another surgery to watch. We walked into another theater (there are 4 total) and there was a boy laying on the operating table. He was probably about 6 or 7 years old and we found out that he had an obstruction in his larynx (in his throat) so the doctors had to place a breathing tube in his throat to keep the child breathing by machine while they removed the obstruction. We didn't stay to watch the whole thing because it was really hard to observe since the working area was so small. We then walked down the hall to the last theater and walked in. To our surprise, a man was getting a suprapubic catheter put in. For this, the surgeon has to make an incision in the pelvic region right about the bladder. This is where they place the catheter tube. They then have to enter a scope and tool through the urethra. The surgeon was having a lot of diffuculty seeing anything once he had the scope inside. They have to put the scope inside in order to find the balloon of the catheter and make sure it is set right. We also did not get to finish this surgery because it was already time to leave for lunch.
We all went back to the compound, relaxed and had dinner. A group of us decided to go back to the hospital at around 9:30 pm. We split up between casuality and minor theater. I was in minor theater and shortly after we arrived, a mother brought in her 4 and 1/2 year old son who had fallen and cut his head open. We examined the cut and it was deep, we could see his skull. We first sterilized the cut, shaved the hair around it, removed the hair in the cut so it wouldn't get infected, and then Homyan and Mia proceeded to put Lidocane in. While in this process, the Lidocane shot up and squirted them both in the face. Homyan got it in his eye and Mia got it on her cheek and lips. Nothing serious happened, they just felt a little tingling where it hit them at. Once that was done, Mia started suturing and put 2 stitches in the boys head. We cleaned the wound and put a dressing on it. The boy did cry out a few times, but for how young he was he handled the situation very well. For the rest of the time until we left at 12:30 am, we didnt have anymore patients.
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