(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 anesthesia where the person made to sleep using gases and medicines. The anesthesiologists will put a tube down her airway and will control her breath for the duration of the surgery.
The instruments have been released from their case. There’s a lot of shiny things on top of all the blue paper. My friends are counting them and the sponges to make sure nothing gets left behind in the patient. Yes, it’s happened before and the effects have been catastrophic.
Television monitors will be brought in because of the technique we are using to remove the kidney. Three small incisions no longer than one inch will be made that will allow the insertion of tubes that have a handle on one end and a fine surgical instrument on the other. Gas is used to inflate the patients abdomen and all of this activity will be visible using a camera that is designed to be inserted into one of these incisions. Once the instruments are in place the monitors will be moved into position, the circulating RN will shut off the lights, and O.R. 14 will go dark.
I’ll check on them again in about three hours…
