Milly's Tuesday and Wednesday in the OR

When I first arrived at the OR (operating room), the nurse told me to change into hospital scrubs and sandals. Super excited to finally get to wear the oh-so-fashionable green scrub dress with crocs that everyone has been raving about in our Summer A volunteers' group message. 

In the morning, I observed two surgeries. The first was a knee replacement operation. The nurses first scrubbed the patient's entire right leg throughly with an antibacterial foaming solution and then liberally wiped the patient's leg with betadine, an antiseptic and disinfectant. To further prevent contamination and reduce risk of infection, they wrapped the patient's leg with a giant "sticker". Here, the OR begins at nine and there are five operating rooms. The nurses spend a lot of time prepping the rooms and equipment before the operation, making sure everything is sterile and keeping count of the number of gauzes, rolls, scalpels, tweezers, and others. 

After they finished preparing and the doctor (as well as all the nurses were scrubbed in), they began the operation by making a vertical incision down the patella, cutting to reveal the bone and using the cauterizing equipment to stop bleeding. It was startling at first to see how vigorous and "rough" the doctors were being, as they hammered metal pieces and sawed into the patient's kneecap to form a flat surface to glue the replacement onto. 

Next, they mixed up two reagents to form  cement to adhere the replacement to the bone. The doctor let me see what it was like, by telling me to take the extra cement and roll it in my palm. The cement started off sticky and soft, but as you rolled it longer began to turn hard  and warm, and then hot. The doctor then told me to drop the ball on the floor and listen to see if it made a "clack-clack-clack", which is the correct sound it is supposed to make. I threw it too hard and it ended up ricocheting around the room, which made him laugh. It was fun. 

After the replacement pieces were in place, they surtuted the patient's leg back up, layer by layer. 

The second surgery was removing the replacement and putting in a metal bar. 

Wednesday, I got to see a hemorrhoidetomy and cholecystectomy. It was a difficult case, so they did not have as much time to answer any questions, but it required patience and throughness.