Surgery, A Team Sport.

On Monday I walked into the hospital incredibly excited. It was to be my first day in Surgery, arguably the most competitive, driven and intense field in medicine. Anthropology has given me many things to question about surgery and its aggressive approach to healing but I couldn't help the anticipation building to witness my first surgery in person. It was to be only a simple umbilical hernia but as they say, those begging at the bottom of the surgery observation totem pole cannot be choosers.

It turned out to be nothing like I expected, including the patient. A baby girl a little over a year old had a benign tumor on her neck, that was nearly larger in size than her own head. I had seen this patient last week, in the neonatal unit when my oncology doctor was consulting on her case. It struck me then how much I wanted to help this tiny tiny person who squirmed, cried, and swatted at this enormous literal weight on her sholder. Its difficult even for me to understand my comparatively strong emotional reaction to this particular patient because I knew that once this tumor was removed, in all probablilty this child would live a long healthy life, that complications would be unlikely and that is not a statement that can be made for many patients in this ward of the hospital. But it was her who had me blinking furiously while pretending to read growth charts in a foriegn language and failing.

So when I walked into the OR and saw her lying on the table I was overjoyed. Here we would help her, these talented folks would take away the bad things and leave her healthy and whole. And they did. But Surgery, among other things, is a messy business. It requires emotional disassociation, for a short time to look only at the task and hand and forget that every cut is into skin, every tear into flesh,  every stitch into a tiny helpless infant, and precision was a pipe dream. And with this little girl that was a momentous task for me.

I have observed six different operations, simple and complex, interesting and heartwrenching, since this patient. And I can say it is getting easier to look at the task at hand, and I am beginning to become at least sensitized to the violence that is surgery in chaos. It is necessary, it is well intentioned and these surgeons are talented. And for the remaining day I have decided to take comfort in the buddist proverb, 'There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting.' I have started in my journey to find something like a true calling, so I guess there is no turning back. But if I meet the buddha on the road, I may have to kill him.