Monday, May 12, 2008















This is what happens when you're the junior surgeon at a community hospital. Today was one of those mornings where there happened to be three laparoscopic cholecystectomies scheduled at the same time. Apparently there's not enough video equipment to make this happen. When I arrived in the room, the surgical assistant was wheeling in this rickety looking video monitor that looked like it had last been used for some middle school study hall presentation.
-Where did you find that thing? I asked
-In the basement. It's all we have left.
-Oh. I see.

Meanwhile, two rooms away, the senior surgeon is toiling away happily with the latest in HD technology. Whatever. That's what you get when you're low man on the totem pole. So we flip the thing on and there's no color. It's a black and white monitor. It's like watching an episode of Leave it to Beaver, only with human organs and surgical instruments instead of Jerry Mathers. Fortunately, everything went well; routine chronic cholecystitis. The patient was never compromised. By the end of the case, I was starting to like the black and white look. In fact, I requested that for my next case they dust off the sterile rabbit ears. And to look around the basement to see if they had any hickory dissecting instruments.... Anyway, I'll always remember it as my "I Love Lucy Gallbladder".

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yeah. The totem pole definitely exists.

The Happy Hospitalist said...

hilarious