Last night, I had the most "medical student" experience of my life when I finally caved and accompanied my surgery preceptor on an organ procurement. (He's been nagging at me for months about coming along and I've been begging off because it's a logistical nightmare
So yes, I went to go procure (I'm avoiding the use of the word "harvest", which sounds so inhumane) a pair of lungs. Many med students imagine a dramatic trip on a private jet/helicopter to a faraway hospital, where you disembark, cooler in hand, white coat flapping in the wind, #whitecoatsaviorcomplex on full display. I was in a dark van, creeping through traffic on the Bay Bridge, to romantic San Ramon. My preceptor was playing games on his phone. I was going over flashcards. Not 20 words were exchanged between us on this 1.5 hour ride.
The one thing that struck me as we entered the OR is that I have never seen so many surgeons gathered together in such a small space. There was the cardiac team from Stanford, the liver team from who knows where, us, and the random ENT guy who had come to try to take the inner ears. Before the case began, we read a short statement from the donor's mother about who she was in life and how fitting it was for her to end her final chapter with this ultimate act of generosity. After a moment of silence, the case began -- three surgeons working simultaneously and on the clock to preserve and remove the vital organs (Not ENT guy. Nobody knows what's going on with ENT guy). With so many people working in just as many places, there was really no space for a med student who contributes nothing at the operating table. But my preceptor had me scrub in, so there I was, a medical Zacchaeus perched on a step behind the team, trying to get a glimpse at what was going on. The cardiac guy (not a doctor, everyone was sure to inform me), had pity on me and drew me to the tableside. He instructed me to grab hold of the beating heart. He knew he was making my night. He knows he's a rock star. Once he got his heart out, he took it and left.
And then there were two. I usurped cardiac guy's spot at the table and suctioned away like any good med student does. I watched my preceptor meticulously extract the lung from the thoracic cavity, then he turns to me, THRUSTS THE LIVING ORGAN INTO MY HANDS, and says "Don't drop it."
You son of a bitch.
This is the same guy who, with no warning, handed me a rib clipper and said, "Cut the goddamn rib, Abby." But I'll get into that at a later date.
Don't get me wrong, I love this guy. He's so awkward and strange, he must be protected at all costs. But his idea of a good time is performing major surgery at 1AM and mine is more along the lines of eating fresh cookies with warm milk in my pajamas while watching The Great British Baking Show and going to bed at a reasonable hour...so you might say we have vastly different ways of approaching life.
So we packed the fresh lungs on ice into a box and rushed them back to UCSF. My surgeon and I spend some time cleaning up the lungs and prepping them for transplant. When we finish, he turns to me and says "You can stay if you want to watch them put it in." Out of the corner of my eye, I see the other medical student make eye contact with me and scootch over to make room by the operating table. Um. It's 1AM. I give the med student a minute shake of my head before telling my preceptor that I'll just head out when he heads out. (My poor preceptor gets so disappointed when he's reminded that I have no interest in surgery.) And that's how I ended up snuggled in bed at 1:30AM with no regrets and a lifetime experience under my belt that gives me license to say "I did it. I never need to do this again." (I have a full pack of these medical experiences. This one will go next to "C-section", "overnight trauma shift", and "research". I'm still waiting to collect "vaginal delivery" and "CPR".)
Main take-aways from last night's experience:
- I'm probably done with red snow cones for a very long time.
- Organ donors are amazing human beings who are saving multiple lives with their selflessness. I'm registered as an organ donor, you should too!
- I'm definitely not going to be a surgeon....buuuut it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.
- I HELD A BEATING HEART IN THE PALM OF MY HAND. (I thought I would be cool about it, but nope, geeking out.)
- Lungs are a lot lighter than they look
- If you give me cookies and a hot chai, I'll endure just about anything.
I would say this was probably the coolest thing I've done/witnessed as a medical student. There's definitely always good and bad with any experience but I feel like I focus very much on "the annoying" when it comes to med school. Moments like this remind me that I am in a position of privilege, that not everyone gets to be in the room where it happens, and I should appreciate every opportunity that comes along, even if I would rather be sleeping. (If I tell myself this enough times, maybe I'll start to believe it.)
I'm probably the laziest med student in the world, but God continues to bless me with these learning opportunities despite my terrible attitude and dry,withered field of fucks. So I'm grateful and I'm taking it one day at a time in hopes that sometime in the not-so-distant future, I'll crawl across the finish line of the triathlon that is medical school -- battered, bruised, but better for it -- as a decent doctor. Because that's all we can really hope for.
...and now back to the vagina.
