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Jun. 13th, 2007 05:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
madshutterbugI knew I'd be circulating an OR today even before I got up. I mean, hey, it's the start of summer vacation time. Short staffed, you know. So I didn't think much about the lack of traffic on the road. Hey, the Uni is in between Summer A & Summer B. How many students could be in town?
Got into Hospital, dressed in, checked my assignment. Yah. OR 9, Neurosurgery. Couple of deep-brain stimulators, you know, treat the seizures from Parkinsons and cerebal palsy, that kind of thing. We got rolling pretty quick, all our people were there, but there were a lot of rooms where the staff hadn't reported in yet. I figured somebody's head would roll for short-staffing to the extreme, you know?
Brought our first patient in, and it seemed a bit odd that she was so giggly. Still, Versed will do that to some people. Makes them sorta like zombies, giggling, take directions OK and best of all, very little memory of what happens. She slid over to the OR table and we got her set up with her head pinned in the head-holder. Prep didn't take long, we don't shave hair for DBS procedures, only need a little burr-hole to insert the electrodes.
But that's when it got strange, you know? I mean, even though we keep patients awake for these (got to know when the electrode is in the correct place, stops the tremors, eh?), they aren't supposed to be giggling through the whole thing. That's bad enough, but when she pulled her head out of the pins? And laughed about it, reaching up and grabbing the surgeon by the neck?
That just wasn't right.
You know, it takes a while using a #10 scalpel blade, but if you know enough anatomy you can separate a head from a zombie that way...
Got into Hospital, dressed in, checked my assignment. Yah. OR 9, Neurosurgery. Couple of deep-brain stimulators, you know, treat the seizures from Parkinsons and cerebal palsy, that kind of thing. We got rolling pretty quick, all our people were there, but there were a lot of rooms where the staff hadn't reported in yet. I figured somebody's head would roll for short-staffing to the extreme, you know?
Brought our first patient in, and it seemed a bit odd that she was so giggly. Still, Versed will do that to some people. Makes them sorta like zombies, giggling, take directions OK and best of all, very little memory of what happens. She slid over to the OR table and we got her set up with her head pinned in the head-holder. Prep didn't take long, we don't shave hair for DBS procedures, only need a little burr-hole to insert the electrodes.
But that's when it got strange, you know? I mean, even though we keep patients awake for these (got to know when the electrode is in the correct place, stops the tremors, eh?), they aren't supposed to be giggling through the whole thing. That's bad enough, but when she pulled her head out of the pins? And laughed about it, reaching up and grabbing the surgeon by the neck?
That just wasn't right.
You know, it takes a while using a #10 scalpel blade, but if you know enough anatomy you can separate a head from a zombie that way...
