Scrub
Posted by hi G on 2011. 3. 23. 06:13Scrubbed in for the first time.
Observed many times, done it on a cadaver, but, for the first time, actually scrubbed in -- in a cesarean section on a healthy expecting mother. Actually washed my hands, and put on the surgical gown and gloves. It was a ritual that invited me into the mystically sterile world of the OR. There is an invisible border in the OR that discriminates against the non-sterile from the sterile. Observing from a distance, I always had to be careful not to get in anyone's way or touch any persons or equipments that had gone through the ritual. Once I scrubbed in, however, I found myself on the other side of the border -- a border that I was meant to cross at some point in my career, though I never expected it to happen so soon.
Scrubbing in is like a prelude to a battle -- against the microbes, those invisible yet ubiquitous creatures that can cause infection when surgeons cut into the skin and mucosa, which normally provide the first line of defense. Scrubbing in meant that I was now in the battle. It meant that what I did right -- or wrong -- would matter this time.
Throughout the surgery, I was standing right next to the attending surgeon, my mentor, holding the clamps and cutting the suture threads. I was so present, so involved, when the resident cut her way through the abdominal cavity; when the amniotic sac popped and let the water out; when the baby was pulled out of the uterus and began crying. In a way, it was a birth of its own kind -- for the first time in my life, I was out in the new world, feeling as naked as the newborn.
"That was such a high," said Meredith in the first episode of Grey's Anatomy, after her first surgery as an intern. There's no better way of putting it. So real. So close. That was such a high.
Observed many times, done it on a cadaver, but, for the first time, actually scrubbed in -- in a cesarean section on a healthy expecting mother. Actually washed my hands, and put on the surgical gown and gloves. It was a ritual that invited me into the mystically sterile world of the OR. There is an invisible border in the OR that discriminates against the non-sterile from the sterile. Observing from a distance, I always had to be careful not to get in anyone's way or touch any persons or equipments that had gone through the ritual. Once I scrubbed in, however, I found myself on the other side of the border -- a border that I was meant to cross at some point in my career, though I never expected it to happen so soon.
Scrubbing in is like a prelude to a battle -- against the microbes, those invisible yet ubiquitous creatures that can cause infection when surgeons cut into the skin and mucosa, which normally provide the first line of defense. Scrubbing in meant that I was now in the battle. It meant that what I did right -- or wrong -- would matter this time.
Throughout the surgery, I was standing right next to the attending surgeon, my mentor, holding the clamps and cutting the suture threads. I was so present, so involved, when the resident cut her way through the abdominal cavity; when the amniotic sac popped and let the water out; when the baby was pulled out of the uterus and began crying. In a way, it was a birth of its own kind -- for the first time in my life, I was out in the new world, feeling as naked as the newborn.
"That was such a high," said Meredith in the first episode of Grey's Anatomy, after her first surgery as an intern. There's no better way of putting it. So real. So close. That was such a high.