I did shadow a surgeon in the operating room today. It was wicked awesome. First of all, I got to wear full on surgical scrubs. I should have taken a camera because I was so fucking excited about that part. I wore the mouth mask thingy and everything! God, that right there fulfilled so many fantasies.
The patient lady had an electrode inserted along her spine about a month ago with a battery pack implanted down her lower back. She had swelling around both the battery pack and the electrode, so the surgeon went in to determine whether there was some sort of immune fluid build up (think like liquid pus stuff) or a leak of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) from a tear in the spinal cord covering (very clear brain bath liquid). It actually took about an hour just to prep the patient by positioning her correctly and getting the anesthesia set up (anesthesiologists have a pretty boring job in my opinion, they just sit there after they get the person down). They then isolated the area that would be worked on by placing a crap load of different towels (not really towels, but I can't think of the word) on the person. Eventually you couldn't even see the person except for the area that was going to be cut.
Anyway, now to the juicy stuff (hehe). So there was a lot of swelling because of the build up of fluid. With swelling like that, there's a lot of pressure built up as well. The surgeon made the incision in the skin and as soon as he got through the muscle layer, a bunch of liquid spurted out of the wound. Now, I was afraid I wouldn't be able to handle the cutting and spurting and whatnot, but apparently all my years of watching tv have desensitized me completely. Yay for not having feelings! Watching the surgery was pretty neat. It turns out there was a rip in the covering of the spinal cord, so they had to go in and do spine surgery.
The spinal cord is held in that hole/white space, so the surgeon shaved off the spinous process to get to it (yay for drilling bones away). I kinda assume you need an intact spinal bones, but apparently not so much. Learning about all the abuse a human body can take is fun. After 4 hours of standing around on my part, the surgery was done and I got to leave. It was sad because my legs didn't want to walk home. I literally stumbled like 4-5 times. Standing's hard, yo.
Oh and fun surgical stereotype that's true: at the end of the surgery when they were sewing the patient up, the surgeon and staff started talking about nights they've gone out drinking too hard and general debauchery that ensued. It was pretty great.
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