Transplant

If you want to know what it is like to work as an anesthesiologist, I suggest watching this short song from the amateur transplants on You tube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuZl9tRqjoQ . Although some of my time in the OR is spent reading the news and checking my email, for the most part I just listen to "blips of the heart" plus a little more.

For the most part during the day I take care of people who are getting somewhat elective surgery. Although, when I have been on call over the last couple of months I have taken care of some people in the depths of despair and some that are just finding new beginnings to their lives.

The depths of despair part comes when I get a call at 1am that there is an emergent exploratory laparatomy about to take place on a middle aged mom with 3 kids at home who has a leak in her bowels and an extremely infected abdomen.

The new beginnings comes into play when I get another call at 1am that there is a cadaveric kidney transplant that is coming in. Did I ever tell you that I love pee? Yes, pee. When the transplant surgeon leans over the drapes and says "the vascular anastamosis is finished and the ureter is connected, unclamp the foley (a bladder catheter)," and then the pee just starts pouring out, from the new kidney, wow.....pee is cool. Have you ever thought about what it would be like to not be able to pee because your kidney doesnt work. Jocelyn might think it would be a good thing since she is tired of me getting up at 4am every night to pee, but for someone who has end stage renal disease, it sucks. Instead you have to go to this place called dialysis 3 times a week where they stick a huge freakin needle in your arm and make you sit for 3 hours while the machine pees for you.

A few weeks ago I took care of this awesome lady who was so humble about her circumstances. She had been on dialysis for over 5 years. When the surgery was over and she had her new kidney, all she could say was that she was praying for that family who lost their loved one so that she could have a new kidney. I told her that my prayers would be with her so that everything went well with her recovery, and she gracefully thanked me and then said that she would not want to ask God for any more than He had already given her.