Played Taylor Swift in theatre this morning, in honour of her recent nuptials, until after an hour our surgeon had reached his Swiftian limit and we moved onto something else. (“Who’s this? Harry Styles? Never heard of him.”)
Our first patient was an expat from Brazil, their FIFA match was just getting started when we brought her into theatre . At the end of the operation, she was trying to speak as soon as she woke up and I couldn’t get the breathing tube out fast enough before she was asking about the score. We told her the bad news, 2:1 to Norway, expecting that she’d probably forget it but as soon as we got to recovery she was explaining to the nurses that sadly, Brazil was out of the tournament. Luckily the surgery went well, anyway.
I don’t like to be cynical, but there’s a phrase I’ve heard from plastic surgeons several times over the years, particularly when they survey a patient’s breasts at the end of an operation and the result perhaps isn’t quite as symmetrical as one might like: “Sisters not twins”. Surgery seems to be the natural home of aphorisms: “Never let the sun set on undrained pus” is a sensible one. If someone has an abscess, it should be dealt with sooner rather than later to avoid complications such as systemic sepsis. “All bleeding stops eventually” has less utility I think. It doesn’t help the patient if they are no longer bleeding because their entire cardiac output is now pooling on the theatre floor.
I can only think of one anaesthetic saying at the moment, but there are certain to be more which have temporarily escaped me: “If in doubt, pull it out” referring to a breathing tube which may be in the wrong hole ie the oesophagus instead of the trachea. The former is fairly suboptimal for gas exchange so I would rate the usefulness of this phrase highly.