wrong again

Cardiothoracics is amazing.

I sewed up a half meter of leg. (Then I had to take the stitches out and sew it up again, but my bosses were really nice about it.) I helped twist sternotomy wires into place. I poked a lung out of the way to get at the aorta. I touched a beating human heart.

My life has never been more like Grey's Anatomy.

Despite my pessimistic predictions, the day was somewhat balanced. Sure, I started at 6:45 this morning, but I was home by 6:30 tonight. AND I got lunch. Yes, it was my half day. I essentially worked 5 hours of unpaid overtime, but Dude! I touched a heart!

The team is definitely not used to having a girl around. The conversation centered on the Registrar's lack of sexual prowess as correlated to his manual dexterity. Due the gown/glove/mask combo, I'm pretty sure the Boss thought I was dude. "Sam, pull like a man, not like a little girl..." But they were patient, they taught me ridiculously cool things, and they were very charitable about my fear of surgery.

Actually, maybe they were so nice BECAUSE I'm a girl?

Boss: "You want to do Emergency? It's not as good as cardiothoracics. But it's a good choice for women, cos you can take time off to have babies."

More notables:

- getting told off for being gentle while putting catheters in. "They can't feel it, so if you take more than 2 minutes, you're being soft." Ouch.

- the heart "restart"; not a gentle lub dub, but taking a metal rod and jabbing the exposed myocardium violently, like killing a bug.

- watching litres and litres of blood pour out into tubs, then get sucked back into the body, clean and oxygenated

- getting 6/10 on my (repeat) suture line. Triumph!

- realising I hadn't peed, drunk water or breathed clean air for 5 hours, and still feeling pysched to take on the afternoon operation.

1 day down, 89 to go.