First Breaths (Final)

(Note: This is the last entry of a series I started earlier today.)
When the case is completed, the lights are turned on, the anesthesiologist is waking up the patient, the staff is moving instruments back from the table and unplugging hoses and electric cords and the room becomes  a mess.  There are linens on the [...]

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First Breaths (Part 3)

(Note: This is Part 3 of a series I started earlier today)
11:59AM
O.R. 14 is quiet.  The lights are off except for the one on the swing-arm over the my friend\’s instrument table.  The reflection of the light off of the instruments make them seem heavenly, other-worldly.
Tones-of-voice are matter of fact, which is good.  The surgeon [...]

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First Breaths (Part 2)

(Note this piece is the 2nd in a series I started earlier today.)
8:13AM
The operating room is busier now.  All the niceties from the clinic and our offices have been left behind the double doors that secure the O.R. suites.  It’s all business now.
My patient has been guided onto the table and is about to experience general [...]

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First Breaths, Last Breaths, and Everything in Between

I realized this morning that my work has taken me through the entire lifespan.  I’ve watched my patients take in their very first taste of air as well as expel their last lung-full of breath.  My patients’ ages have been measured in minutes and seconds as well as decades.  I’ve work with patients who weighed [...]

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Two Sisters Who Would Also Be Daughters & Donors

I really don’t like talking about work so this space is quickly becoming a repository of stories about what I do for a living.
Let me start out by saying that I love my job.  I’m the only one in the office on a rainy, Sunday afternoon and I don’t mind a bit because of the [...]

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And I Carried Her In My Arms

A woman today was dying in our clinic.  There was a lot of blood and her breathing had changed and her eyes looked panicked and frightened because she didn’t know what was happening to her body. 
We grouped around her dressed in our lab coats and scrubs.  Those closest to her had their hands on her [...]

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