Surgery: Day One

We had a fantastic, busy day today in the OR at Hermano Pedro! We ran three ORs and were able to complete 16 cases by 4 pm. Our anesthesia staffing is a bit tight this week so each anesthesia provider is running their own room; we have a retired anesthesiologist available to give breaks and to give us a hand as needed for pediatric cases, etc. Usually we have four anesthesia providers and we juggle all the cases and rooms so each provider gets significant chunks of time to lollygag. I prefer it the way we did it today as I get into a routine with the circulator, scrub, hospital staff and surgeon.

I worked with Omar Sanan today, a general surgeon from Minneapolis. He is a very low-key guy who is also a skilled surgeon. He regaled all the ladies in the room with funny stories in English and all the muchachos (the hired guys who work full-time at the hospital) with different funny stories in Spanish. At one point he nicked a vein on a laparoscopic case and tried to put a staple on the vein to stop the bleeding. Only he quickly found out we were out of staples! He calmly removed the stapler from the tiny trocar hole and placed a grasper into the same hole, pinched off the vessel, and waited until more staples could be located. Ah, the world of anesthesia in a third world country!

This evening I had dinner with five other women in our group at a great French restaurant about a block from our hotel. We were done by 7 and all looking forward to coming back to our hotel and reading good books and going to sleep!

We have 16 more cases on the schedule for tomorrow--gallbladders, hernias, and hysterectomies. I'll try to remember to take some pictures while we're in the OR so I can upload them tomorrow.