OR Practicum

So, I finally had my OR Practicum today (as it was cancelled last time because there wasn't any surgeries that were applicable to my training). But now I'm so tired. I woke up at 5... so I could leave the house by 6... to make sure I got to the High River Hospital before 7:30. My feet are so sore and tired as I stood for basically 9 hours straight with perhaps 10-15 minutes of sitting down throughout that entire 9 hours. Mentally, I'm actually awake... but physically drained. As getting up early in the mornings is just something I can't do, lol. And the standing for 9 hours straight hurts. I also didn't get to eat lunch till 4:30... so, I was getting weak by the end of the day.

My purpose in the OR was to practice maintaining a patients airway when they are unconscious (or in this training case: highly sedated). And the thing with that is... it only takes about 5 minutes or so of each individual surgery for me to do as you end up hooking the patient up to a automatic respirator. The rest of the time during the surgeries... I just stand someplace trying to not get in the way and watch the docs do their magic. It probably made for a longer day as there were 2 med students there getting their training in the surgeries as well. But it was interesting... we had 8 surgeries total today for about 9 hours. The first one... was over in like 10 minutes... it was that quick. I don't even really know what the surgery was about... I just know it had to do with gynecology, lol (luckily... I stand at the head of the patient... on the complete opposite side so I don't have to see what they were actually doing). 5 of the other surgeries were to remove hernias... so they weren't overly exciting... just some incisions and some burning away of skin/fat/mucous lining, etc...

The last 2 were the interesting ones. They were also the longest ones, so my feet hurt like crazy trying to stand in one place for an hour without moving around too much. But they were surgeries to remove the gallbladder. It was like watching TLC up-close-and-personal. They had the monitors and tvs up with the camera-view of inside the patients abdomen. And after they cut the gallbladder away from all the surrounding tissue and organs... they actually inserted a bag into the patients abdomen and stuffed the gallbladder into this bag. They then pulled the bag out through one of the small holes that they had cut into the patients abdomen... pretty interesting things to watch. :P

Anyways... Clinical Practicum at Rockyview Monday to Friday of next week... which is going to interesting... exciting... scary... and crappy all together. Crappy because I have to wake up at 4-430 every morning. AND the fact that my final lab/scenario exam is the monday after... so I come home from my shifts next week to study... going to be EXHAUSTED!