Heartstrings
Right now I can still recall the smell of burning human flesh, in all its vividity. Mmm, nothing like the smoke of barbequed subcutaneous fat in the morning to wake you up.
It’s been a while since I’ve scrubbed up and gone to theatre.
For the first 20 minutes I was fascinated by the magic of being able to open up a chest cavity and visualise a live, beating heart (albeit a slightly diseased one) surounded by live, inflating lungs. Enthralled by the genius of being able to stop the heartbeats whilst diverting blood supply to the bypass machine. A fantastic pumping system, but not revealing the slightest bit relation to anything emotionally we associate with the heart: love, desire, despair.
But the novelty quickly wore off and I found myself strapped in with nowhere to run for one of the longest operations I’ve been in. Combine that with an inexperienced nurse, my nervousness in an unfamiliar place, and my reg’s thick subcontinental accent, and it did not make for a good educational experience. An analogy worthy of medicine itself. Initially I thought it was going to be worthwhile, noble, interesting. No-one really mentions the long hours of nothing, the boredom, the fear (of making a mistake, of dealing with people, of everything!) and the drowning in an endless tsunami of impossible knowledge, not until you find out for yourself. And by then it’s too late of course.
