THEN HE SAWED OPEN HIS CHEST!

I was in the surgery changing room digging through a rack of scrubs to find my size. Nervous and excited I quickly changed and met the RN who would escort me to operating room 18. It was my day in the OR. I had wondered all night how it would go. What surgery would I be watching? Who would be the surgeon? Was he going to ask me questions I didn't have an answer to, leaving me feeling inadequate? What if the worst happened...I'd see the blood and guts, get dizzy , throw up and pass out. They would probably just drag me outside the room and carry on. And I would be the inspiration of all their jokes for the next few months, blushing every time I saw them in the halls.
"Oh, I'll put you in the OR with Dr.P, he's doing a coronary bypass , you'll love him." I was listening to the nurse while trying to put on my surgical mask like I had done it a thousand times. The OR room was bright and clean. Several sterilized staff members were busy filling basins, opening sterile instrument trays and dropping sutures onto their work fields. They were very kind and explained that the Physicians Assistant was harvesting the vein and I could stand by and watch. But if I broke their sterile field they would have to kill me and if I felt flush or dizzy to "back up to the wall and sit down". I took it all in as I watched him by video digging through yellow fat and tissue, finding just the right place to remove this vein. Once the vein was out, it was way smaller than I had imagined in my head. Smaller than the diameter of a pencil, pink, and rubbery. Glad I made it through that part, not so bad. The surgeon was paged and we began.

Anesthesia let me stand on a stool at the head of the bed, overlooking this 200+ pound white man with a freshly shaved chest. As the surgeon grabbed the scalpel and cut strait down the center of his chest I could feel my heart pounding. That part wasn't bad at all, then he asked for "the saw". I tried to mentally prepare myself for what I was about to witness but that's really hard when you've never seen a human body sawed open before. How else are they supposed to get through the sternum? I guess I hadn't ever really thought about it. Next he sawed through the sternum and applied a sort of crank to hold open the chest. I detached from the reality of it,and it became strictly medical.
Now this chest was open and there it was, A BEATING HUMAN HEART. Right in front of my eyes! I couldn't believe what I was watching. It was truly amazing! In order to quiet the heart down to a "quivering" organ they could work on...they poured a bucket of ice over it, they also hooked him up to the bypass machine and then began looking for bypass sites. I watched in awe. Inspired by the fact that this kind of thing is possible, I contemplated if I was capable of becoming a surgeon. Then the thought of 10+ more years of school flashed across my brain and my surgical aspirations quickly disappeared.
Magnifying goggles were required to utilize sutures so small that I could barely see them. Once it was all over , the two sides of the sternum were wired back together. It took a ton of strength to jam a needle through the bone on both sides,and run wire through to tie it up tight.4 chest tubes were placed, 1 on either side of the heart and 1 by each lung, and some pacing wires were attatched to the heart and threaded through the front of his chest. Now, it was basically over.

I made it without embarrassing myself! I wanted so bad to take a photo with my phone of my view, looking over the drape at an open chest, a beating human heart and the surgeon performing a potentially life saving procedure.

My life was changed by my experience that day in the OR. I love my role as caretaker of these people even more and can truly understand why they hurt so bad afterwards. Lesson learned: eat your veggies and exercise so you wont have to get your chest sawed open, and that is one lesson I'm saving for my kids. - THE ROOKIE