My general surgery list came as a bit of a surprise to me yesterday.
That particular surgeon specialises in thyroid surgeries, but instead our list was filled with more run of the mill things like gallbladders and hernias, typically described as a list of rats and mice. Mind you, the average age was around eighty, and all had at least one serious coexisting illness, so there were some challenges for us. I had to hold my junior accomplice back from a number of clever interventions she had read about and was keen to try. My modus operandi can best be described as “getting over heavy ground lightly” AKA following the KISS principle whenever possible. I generally find the best outcomes result from doing the basic stuff well, rather than over complicating things. The enemy of good is better, as they say. (How many aphorisms have I managed to squeeze into this post so far?? More than you can shake a stick at I’m sure.) Anyway, it did mean I was free to go and help with a red bell alarm coming from the theatre next door, which was the real deal, with CPR in full swing on my arrival. (Diagnosis TBC, likely anaphylaxis.)
We all worked hard to get through the list, and we were only running half an hour over our rostered finish time when we phoned the recovery unit for a space for our final patient, at 4:30. Unfortunately, as so often happens, there was no room at the inn, mostly due to bed block in the rest of the hospital. This sort of delay is sadly open ended. At first, the rest of the team stayed with us, but as time went by, they gradually dispersed until only one nurse was left behind with me and the patient. By that time, the patient was sitting up and chatting with us, had had a drink of water and an ice block and had borrowed my phone to ring her daughter and assure her that she was fine.
The nurse then asked me, are you humming a particular song, or is it just a random tune? Well, I had no idea that I’d been humming at all, and vociferously denied I’d been doing any such thing, but in my heart I knew I probably had been. I think it’s something I do quite often, while being completely unaware of it. I remember one anaesthetic technician telling his colleagues that he knew when I was anxious or unhappy about the way a surgery or anaesthetic was going, by the way I stopped humming.
Similarly, earlier on in the day, I was chatting to our heavily pregnant Duty Anaesthetist, when she said to me “There’s no way I could balance on one leg like that! I’d have tipped over onto the floor five minutes ago.” Once again, I had no idea I was doing my balancing exercises at the time. It’s something I’ve taken up to improve my chances of longevity, since a hip fracture after a fall is a common coup de grace for little old ladies. But it wasn’t supposed to be something I did anywhere beyond the privacy of my own home.
I guess while neither of these things is as bad as something truly antisocial, such as picking my nose or scratching my arse, it’s still embarrassing. In some ways, humming could potentially be regarded as even worse, as I’m sure some people would regard it as noise pollution, whereas you can always look the other way from arse scratching.
I do feel somewhat aggrieved that my mindfulness training hasn’t curbed either of these mindless actions. Surely if I was aware of everything going on all the time then I’d know I was doing it? Maybe I should just be grateful I don’t get real complaints, just interested questions interspersed with the occasional passive aggressive comment.
For another point of view, AI thinks my strange behaviour is actually to be commended:
Although, to be fair, this is the same AI that gave me the following cryptic crossword advice this morning:
