Today was the most incredible day of my entire life. I spent more 12 hours in the hospital and loved every second of it. I was able to witness the most beautiful things I have ever seen, and it left me feeling on a high all day. If something can instill those kind of feelings, I feel like I need look no further for signs of what I want to do with my entire life. If my day was half as interesting as today, I would be happy.
Today I firsts spent some time in the ER doing consultations, and then I got to shadow Joana's surgery on the patient we saw yesterday who got the endoscopy. They cut open the patient and the intestines came spilling out. (The textbooks are right: there are so much intestines.) The tumor was in the colon as known from the endoscopy, but when they found it, it was in a different place than they had originally thought, and it was also much bigger. Usually, they would able to do a lot more testing before surgery to figure this out, but the surgery was urgent because the patient's bowel was completely full and would burst if it weren't fixed immediately. They cut and sutured the part of the colon with the tumor (as well as all the blood vessels that go along with it) and then attached the intestines to the wall of the abdomen. From now on, the patient's poop will collect in a bag on the side of his abdomen. However, before this, the doctors pushed the feces in the intestines back up into the stomach and then a tube was put through his nose to the stomach. The tube then sucked out the feces. Yes, this means that the patient was essentially POOPING THROUGH HIS NOSE. I know this should be really gross, but I just thought it was absolutely incredible.
After the surgery, I went to OB/GYN to see if there were any births today. The doctor there (who I can understand because she speaks Spanish instead of Portuguese) told me that there would be one in 1-2 hours. After my experience yesterday, I knew that this estimate was merely guesswork and that it could happen much sooner than that. So, I grabbed a quick lunch, changed out of my scrubs, and waited in the break room in OB/GYN. I love the OB/GYN department because it is so small and so homey feeling. In the break room, I used my friend's nook to pass time with reading. She only has super girly books on it, and I ended up reading Chelsea Handler, which wasn't even that funny. (Her Are You There Vodka? book is so much better.) I pretty much finished the entire book because the birth didn't start until more than three hours later.
The woman having the baby was German, but she also spoke English and Portuguese (and pretty much every other language.) It was her first child, and she had an abnormally long and painful labor. They had to cut open her vagina further using scissors, and seeing that snipped away like that was a little shocking. She was screaming bloody murder. This was more blood than I have ever seen on my entire life, and after the birth, there were further complications because they could not get the placenta out. Still, all the gore was perfectly okay because I was witnessing a miracle that has been happening since the beginning of time. Childbirth is beautiful, and I almost felt like God was in the room.
They attached this tool to the head of the baby and then used that to pull the baby out. When the baby finally came through, I experienced one of the most weird gut feelings. I can't explain it exactly, but I couldn't believe that baby was in there the whole time. It just didn't seem possible. He was curled up, super white and covered in blood. It almost looked unreal or maybe it still just looked like a fetus (I know this is wrong but it almost looked alien-like when it first came out.) Still, it was all shockingly beautiful, and I couldn't help myself from crying. I was just standing there with makeup streaming down my face, and I thanked the lady for letting me witness that. She almost looked at me curiously, and I'm not sure if it was the drugs or the shock of labor, but she almost seemed indifferent to having the baby in her arms. But eventually, she began to smile more and was really interested in having me in the room. She obviously realized what a profound effect the birth had on me. She even let me help maneuver the baby so she could breast feed. It was amazing, and her baby was just absolutely the most precious munchkin.
I ended up learning that the mother was actually a 22 year old girl who has been traveling the world for the past four years (literally everywhere you can imagine), living off of minimum wage and the excitement of adventure. The father of the baby was from England and told her three months ago that he wasn't going to raise the baby with her. Sad. So, her father was in the room with her instead. The two of them were some of the most awesome people I have ever met. I had a long conversation with the father, and the daughter really wanted me to come visit her tomorrow. That is an offer I will absolutely not turn down. I will tell you a little more about the two of them tomorrow.
Miscellaneous Thoughts:
- I was so happy I had Joana today who explained everything to me during and after the surgery. After the surgery, she even drew diagrams and spent time talking to me about anatomy to make sure I really understood everything that went on.
- I was surprised that Joana, who is a resident, was able to perform surgery on a patient, especially a surgery as large as this one. She was also doing all the consultations in the ER. I don't believe residents in the US have this same kind of power. She was certainly very capable though.
- It is absolutely crazy to think that one day a man finds out he has cancer and then less than 24 hours later, he has the tumor removed. Everything happened so quickly.
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