Medicine

I've had a lot of surgeries - 12 to be exact, and I loved my doctors. I'll share a couple of the other side of medicine stories from the patient's point-of-view:

When I was 8 I had my first surgery. I remember reading over the bill when it came to my parent's house and asking what a catheter was. My mother explained it to me and I was horrified that someone, even worse, an unknown someone had touched my 'private parts.' I vowed to never let that happen again. I mean, why did they need to do that? I had used the bathroom before surgery. . . At that age I didn't know why that's done.

When I was 9 I had 9 surgeries. For the second one I decided to 'prevent' being catheterized. My ingenious plan was to wear my underwear under my gown. I asked my parents to leave the room while I changed so I wouldn't be caught. Brilliant! Following surgery I was coming to and I found a neat little specimen bag with my little black underwear in it! I was too groggy to really care, but I told my mother that I needed to go to the bathroom. She told me it was okay, that I could just go. "Mother!" That was when I realized that the nasty little invader was still in me.

I spent a month in the hospital that year, during which I learned all kinds of neat things like intramuscular injections. The bruises took months to go away. I had shattered my femur bone and endured awful muscle contractions for two weeks. Then the morphine became a bit too much of a friend and I was cut off. Tylenol just didn't do it. Finally I started to heal - more surgeries to correct this leg that didn't want to come together. At least the epiphyseal (spelling?) plates (growth plates) were intact. I'm not very tall, and my legs didn't have to grow much, but at least they're the same length.

I'll skip the more private details of my medical history, but I will recount what it was like to almost die. . .twice. The first time the anesthesiologist made a huge boo-boo. I was a stocky kid and must have looked much heavier than I was. I was way over-anesthetized, and some pretty heroic measures were used to 'fix' the problem. I was half-way through a long procedure and started waking up. The surgeon swore, the anesthesiologist swore, and all I remember was hallucinating and seeing some pretty awesome stuff (oxygen deprivation will do that). The second time I was in recovery after a surgery where I lost a lot of blood. I don't remember what happened, but I wish they had just gone ahead with a transfusion. I was weak and dizzy for weeks following that.

One more good story (this one will keep you away from hospitals. . .) I was recovering from another quite invasive surgery. I had lost a lot of blood and was in a lot of pain. I was taken up to my room at about 9:00 PM. The night was so long. I was in so much pain, but not enough to call out. My call-button had fallen onto the floor. At 8:00 AM I was checked on for the first time. The nurses panicked. I guess they thought I'd sue. I was treated like a queen from there on out.

Why in the world, then, would I want to be a surgeon? If anyone knows about what it feels like to be a patient I do. I also love medicine and am endlessly fascinated by the human body's givings and misgivings. Now we await the MCAT scores. . .