"Oh! Come and see the violence inherent in the system! Help, help! I'm being repressed!" ~Monty Python

I don’t think that I really want to do surgery all day every day. I don’t think that for the most part I like being locked in a dark room with no widows and being told how much of a horrible person you are. In fact, I think that we do that to people that break laws. We send them to little rooms without windows and make them stand behind lines or walk in very specific places lest we yell at them. But also like the jail bird, I get free food, so bonus!

I think that I hit another little snag today. Its all about the radio opaque bed. Its just one of those things where the surgeon really wants the whole thing one way, even if that means steeling a piece of equipment off the code cart, taping it to the bed in the most red-neck looking way (no not duct tape, but it should have been) all so that the surgeon can have the foot 2” closer. So much pandering and puffing up of the ego. Somewhere the patient got lost. But what does it matter, its just a crazy psyc patient anyway, she is not going to complain about the extra time under, or extra x-ray exposure so that Surgeon can prove the point.

I guess I also really thought surgery would be like in MASH. Fixing people and patching them up to get them back home alive. This seems so different, its hard to explain. I helped with a BKA (below knee amputation) yesterday. It really affected me. To take off someone’s foot, its very final and hard to deal with. I guess I just place a lot of value on my feet, and I could do nothing but think about my foot getting cut off all last night when I was running. Its reality, guess its all part of the game. Weird that I don’t care the same if my patient gets cancer, or dies, but getting a foot cut off, freaks me out.