Surgery Makes My Thumbs Hurt

They Still Do...

Had surgery lab yesterday. And it was my turn to be surgeon!

I was actually fighting sleepiness the whole day after NOT sleeping (as usual) before my surgery theory test at 8.30. Nodded off a couple of times in the equine wound lecture from 10.30 to 11.30. I was trying to absorb and understand ovariohysterectomy (spay) procedures from a textbook during lulls in the lecture, OR when I was awake. Whichever came first. I was so fatigued I felt that when I moved my brain was left a few feet behind... Still managed to remember the fantastic wound photographs though...

Didn't have time to get a coffee fix at lunch, I was already a few minutes late for surgery!

The sleepiness started to show when I just COULDN'T toss my surgical gloves onto the Mayo (surgery) table. They fell onto the floor and were considered non-sterile. I must have wasted a few gloves. At first I tore the glove cover wrongly, and when I did it again on a new set correctly from the corners they still didn't open properly, and THEN I couldn't aim straight at flicking them onto the Mayo tray. In my defence it WAS a very small table. Not much larger than an 2 A4 papers put together.

Every instruction from the surgery nurses semed to reach my brain 10 times slower than normal. They were almost going to get fed up with me when my animal came in. Phew! Thanks to Eileen and Jasmine for preparing the pig fast!

We had a girl, I chose her in the morning. She happened to be the runt of the lot, coming in at a whopping 8kg!

Once I made the first cut I totally forgot about being sleepy, it was really exciting trying to stop superficial vessels from bleeding out! We do that by clamping haemostats (a cool clamp-like tool) on the bleeding point. The body's clotting mechahanisms are then stimulated to kick in and then the haemostats can be taken off in a couple of minutes.

After opening the body cavity I located the ovaries and uterus, they were tiny! According to the textbook the final step was to cut off the whole lot just above the cervix, which I couldn't find, so I was a little stumped. It turns out that the pig was to young to have a mature cervix anyway. (It's supposed to be a thicker part of the vagina.) Then I tried to identify the broad ligament that links the ovaries to the kidney. After trying to break the ligament with my fingers (according to the book), I broke a blood vessel in the process, so me and Eileen scrambled to stop the bleeding. After that I pretty much followed the advice of our lecturer's who were there and threw the advice of the book (which was written for cats and dogs anyway) pretty much out the window. So much for doing things by the book.

It turns out surgery is more of an art than a science. There are many ways of doing the same procedure. Which is cool. Because I like cooking (art) more than baking (science) anyway. I know it's bizarre linking food and surgery but I WAS getting hungry towards the end of 6 hours in the lab.

I still had time to attempt a couple of enterotomies (cuts through the intestine). Enterotomies are pretty useful, especially if animals have eaten something they shouldn't have, like socks or baseballs. Ha ha.

Then we had to start closing up three count them THREE layers of skin. On the last layer with about 3 more inches to close my right thumb suddenly started to hurt BAD. I had to pull my thumb out of the glove thumb for some relief. I couldn't continue and my assistant Eileen had to help me close up. Maybe it was the way I was holding the surgical instruments, or maybe the gloves were too tight. But the next biggest size is too floppy for my hands.

My thumbs STILL hurt slightly today. I hope my thumbs can adapt to future surgeries. Because I REALLY like doing them! = )