My dad is over in day surg now. His case was scheduled at 8, which means we had to be there by 6:30. Are you serious? No one should ever have to be anywhere *by* 6:30 am, and I say that as someone who's in work at 7 one or two days a week. So, anyway, naturally this meant that at 5:35, my dad's going, "It's almost six. Aren't you dressed yet? We need to leave soon." After cheerfully ::ahem:: pointing out that 5:35 is not almost 6, and that we were not leaving the house until after 6, I told him that in any case we did not want to get there *too* early, because they wouldn't even be open yet.
Well, apparently I would be wrong there. When we got off the elevator at 6:20, there were probably fifteen people, of whom probably ten were patients, already checked in and sitting in that waiting room. I'm thinking some of them must have been told to be there by 6 or 6:15. That's really barbaric. And one of the reasons why, even though I love watching surgery and even though there are jobs that people who have job skills related to mine do solely in the OR and those jobs are extremely interesting and even though, back years and years and years ago when I did occasionally have to do some things in the OR, I found surgeons to fall into two camps: uptight bastards who made everyone who worked with them miserable *or* wacky goofballs who cranked up the tunes as soon as the patient was out and joked their way through their cases (which is why I'm still suspicious about how I came out of anesthesia wearing those paper bikinis) and made your work day an absolute blast, I never considered a position like that. Be at work before 6? No thank you. People who are actually morning people need careers too.
Plus, when you have to wear one of those surgical caps all day, it makes your hair look like crap.
That was a joke. N E Way. My dad also made me dial my uncle's number for him last night. He wanted to talk to him just in case he died today. 1.) Do you see what I put up with? and 2.) Do you see how I got to be the way I am? (Also, isn't it weird how you still use "dial" in that context, even though there haven't been dial phones for like 25 years? What do young people say? I wouldn't say "call" because that implies I spoke to my uncle. I dunno. Linguistic confusion here.)
Okay, I think that's all I've got to say about that, but maybe there'll be an update later if there is breaking news.
xoxo
4 comments:
I've never understood why surgeons want to serge so early. Having endured a couple of 6am surgery arrivals myself, I wonder why they don't just start surgery at, say, 10am and keep going for the same amount of operations?
Good luck to your Dad with everything!
I see what you did there, hahaha.
Dr D called me at 8:45 to tell me everything went well, there were no surprises (i.e. a big tumor) just the narrowing at the bottom of his esophagus they were expecting, and they stretched it out "pretty good actually." Just waiting for the recovery room to tell me he's up to going home.
The bad news is he still on the liquid diet for at least today and tomorrow. I swear to god, he thought he was gonna be eating steak tonight. If he lived. hahahaha
I think, in a few more years, I'm going to take what I've learnt from your Dad's experience and be a complete pain in the arse to all of my surviving relations in case of illness. It sounds like fun.
Speaking of, I think the surgeons go for early procedures to a) justify too much coffee b)have a ready-made excuse when they fuck up c) make life miserable for the rest of the team. Is it true there's a pair of courses in the first year of med school: Asshole 101-102?
Just make sure to make the "I might die tomorrow" phone calls prior to any minor procedures, 'cause that's really key to the whole thing :-)
Our MILF, who met my dad for the first time yesterday, opined that he is "so cute." I'm like, yeah, he *is* cute, BUT YOU DON'T HAVE TO LIVE WITH HIM.
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