Honing my beatboxing skills

I can't pinpoint the moment when surgery went from something awe inspiring to something, to be  frank, rather boring. But it's happened at less than 3 weeks in, and I must admit, I'm screwed.

Today I stood in the OR for about a total of 8 hours, watching 2 surgeries. During that time, I did my kegels exercises (which seems appropriate on an obgyn rotation), silently beatboxed along with the heart rate monitor and surreptitiously did tendus (a ballet step) beneath the table.

Most people are amazed by the thought of surgery- slicing open a fellow human, tinkering with their insides and sewing them back together again, confident in your ability to heal. To be honest, I am too. I'm amazed by the idea of it. The step by step technique is what fails to inspire. Or at least, the watching of this technique.

To be honest, today wasn't the best example. There was absolutely no role for me in the surgery and with an attending, two residents and a scrub nurse crowded around the bed, basically no room for me as well. I edged my way in only to be repeatedly edged out. And while I could see a corner of the incision on my tippy toes, I really couldn't see much of anything for most of it. Thus the mind-numbing boredom.

That said, there is simply no describing the abject terror (and vague undercurrent of excitement) when someone puts a tool in your hand, even one as simple and harmless as the suction (which does exactly what is says to clear the field of view for the surgeon). That weird, self-doubting, jittery place you go to in your mind feels like adrenaline being poured into your bloodstream by the gallon. Do I suction now? Or will I only get in her way and make her angry? Have I waited too long? Is she angry already? By the time you have made a decision and began your bumbling attempt at suction, the surgeon has taken the suction from your hands to do it herself.

And every once in a while, you do something right. In a surgery a few days ago, we were performing a hysterectomy, slowing clamping, cutting and tying off the blood supply to the uterus so we could remove it. Having finished one side of a large, fibroid-distorted uterus, the surgeon flipped it over to continue the other side. "There's something bleeding on my side," I croaked out, having not spoken for a matter of hours. "Really?" she replied, flipping it back over. On the other side, an artery was rhythmically spurting, having in that short period of time already filled the cavity beneath it with blood. She quickly clamped the artery and tied it off. After the flurry of activity, she looked up from the pelvis and stared me straight in the eyes. "That was good," she said, "that was very good."
Maybe I love surgery.