so, my friend rob said 'dude, you should create a blog...'

So, I did. Here it is. I should probably explain the title. It is a quote from a character off 'The Simpsons', the oft-wrong, walking liability of a doctor, Dr. Nick. In one episode, he, after setting fire to a cannister of gas labeled 'inflammable', goes: "Inflammable means flammable..what a country!". I sometimes feel that once everything is said and done, and I finish medical school and residency, this is the sort of inadequate medical care I will be providing to hapless patients.

Since this is my very first post of any kind, I should probably tell you (and by you, I mean the ad-searching bots and government supercomputers that will be parsing through this piece of text in the wee hours of the night, as I am pretty sure no human is actually going to waste time reading this awful excuse for a catharsis of a blog). I am 23, somewhat pudgy around the mid-section, with a penchant for sporks, cheese sandwiches and the word "concomittant". Concomittantly, I also tend to misuse big words in sentences.

This Monday, I started my Obstetrics and Gynecology rotation. I got to the hospital at 5 am, and by 7:30, had, after fumbling my way through several dead end hallways, found the Operating Room. However, nobody told me that the red line on the floor designated sterile areas from non-sterile areas. So, there I was, sauntering down a busy surgical suite hallway when what do I hear but the rhinocerean (I know that's not the word, but I feel that the adjectivization of the Rhinocerous in the only way to truly express my feelings in this situation) thumps of several..er..rather large, middle aged nurses coming at me from all four directions:
"Girl, that guy don't have a cap on". One of them quickly plopped a surgical cap on top of my head, and then heaved a sign of relief as she stared at her creation: a 6'2" somewhat lanky, bespectacled Indian male, now. thanks to her, adorned with a large, pink-flowered, flowing cap.

Alright, onto scrubbing. I walked over the area where my attending and resident were busy in a age-old ritual of molting off several epidermal layers prior to each procedure. The concept is still relevant even in this age of sterile gloves, since gloves can, and probably often do, have microtears. Still, I can't help but feel like we are beating this whole "Be Sterile, for GOD'S SAKE" thing into the ground with all this. I opened up a soap packet. Of course, it falls into the sink. I awkwardly look around. Nobody cares. I pick it up, throw it away, and get another packet from the dispenser. Now, my hands are soapy and the packet won't open. Damnit.

So, I kept scrubbing until I was pretty sure nobody was looking. Then, I wash, and now, here comes my favoite part, the part I've been waiting to do since I was a little kid: I walked into the OR with my back to the door, and my hands in front of my eyes...just like in the movies. It was sweet.

I think the same lady that affixed my pink head condom earlier was now the scrub nurse in this OR. She looked annoyed, probably because I don't know how to put my hands into the sterile gloves without contaminating me, her, and half the things around us. "No, No, pull it with your right hand, now stick your left hand...no, your other left hand...". She grew impatient. I manage, finally.

Dr. H asks me to walk over and help with the laparascopic camera placement; we were above to suck a bunch of pelvic organs out of this very pleasant, at present anesthesized, lady through very small holes we have placed in her abdomen. I tried to move the camera while watching the monitors at the same time, as I wanted to anticipate where he would like the camera to be pointing. But instead, all that happened was sweat. I start sweating, first a little, then a lot. My ears started ringing, I got the feeling that I was not in myself, that the world had decided that it would rather go about its business without me being a part of it. Then, things got blurry, finally, I couldn't move my legs...

I came to on the floor, my face in direct line with the exposed underside of said pleasant lady. Nobody seemed to have minded that I've passed out. The nurses told me to stay on the floor, so that I don't hurt myself by getting up too quickly. So I did, briefly commenting to myself on the absolute lack of smell in this place, as if someone had taken an air vacuum and sucked every possibly molecule that could be olfactorily interesting out of this room. "Mmm, quite. A sharp contrast to the Labor and Delivery ward, eh, chap", I told myself in a fake British accent I use for internal monologues. The L&D wards had a most organic smell, a mix of baby hair and infant's milk, a smell that glistened with warmth, comfort, nurturing....

"Say, man, why don't you head over to the lounge, have yourself a cup of tea, and we'll be right here once you're ready". My attending is British, and quite a nice brit at that. This was most gracious of him, letting me take a little break to compose myself after keeling over in his OR.

After a cup of diet mountain dew and a couple of danishes, I paced down the halway, looking determined to get in there are get things right. This is my first day, dangit. I gotta do something right. But, I forgot my surgical mask this time. Then, once I put on the mask, it came off while I tried to scrub in. Eventually, I made my way back into the sterile field.

The hours dragged by. The other medical student observing the surgery told me that bending the knees keeps the blood supply going, and will reduce my chances of passing out. So, for the rest of the 12 hour operation, I looked like a two legged horse practicing trotting in place. We managed to take out the organs of interest, but now, it was time for biopsies. Lymph nodes, other pieces of tissues, everything was being biopsied. This lady had cancer, and we had to know where it had spread. Interesting stuff, but my legs were fast giving out. Into hour 10, I started eyeing a black stool located just to my right. I was scrubbed in, so sitting on that stool meant that I would become "contaminated", because I am no longer in the sterile field. I think the stool knew this. As my interest in my attending's fondling of the para-aortic lymph nodes via laparascope waned, I started thinking more and more about that stool. Smug bastard. Sitting there, knowing that I can't sit on him.

Then and there, right as my attending isolated the IVC, I thought: here it was, the argument for ideological relativism in its most basic example. Two weeks ago, when I was resting comfortably at home, well-fed, well-clothed, without pain, I could have cared less about that stool. Now, I seriously thought about exchanging a kidney for 10 minutes on top of that sucker. My leg was searing with pain, exacerbated no doubt, by the fever I had been running all day. Circumstances change, and people's priorities change, and even the smallest perturbations can cause people to desire things or embrace ideas that seemed either absurd or just plain non-relavant to them just a little while earlier. On the drive home an hour later, I remembered a scene from the movie 'Ronin', where Robert DeNiro, fed up a fellow hitman's grandiose recollections of gunfights, murders and assaults, walks up to him, "accidentally" spills some coffee on his lap, and while the chap looks down to clean himself up, DeNiro places the guy in a headlock. "Ambush, huh? " DeNiro says, "I just ambushed you with a cup of coffee". I guess I got ambushed by a stool.