Adventures in the OR

Waking up at 5am in order to make it to the OR in time is really hard! Especially when you get there in time and realize you have to wait for the patient to be prepped and what it really means is that you could've slept another hour more. FML.

I've seen more laparoscopic cholecystectomy than I care for, and the one surgery I saw that I liked the most, was not even part of my program: an awake craneotomy to remove a glioblastoma multiforme. Fancy words for saying that they open the skull, expose the brain and take out the tumor. All the while, you are awake.

And what a wonder it was walking in there, seeing the brain exposed in all its glory and what fascinated me the most was how the brain was moving in the skull, full of blood pumping through it and full of life. It seemed almost alien like, almost as if it wasn't really happening. And, it completely knocked the breath out of me. The patient was talking as if nothing was happening and I stood there, completely mesmerized, unable to move, to say anything, to think anything! Here was the command center, the brain, in all its glory and we were messing around with it, to save someone's life.

Who wants to go back to taking out gallbladders after this?