From “Doctor” to “Oops”

Melting on the O.R. Floor

Being a medical student is interesting. Being a medical student can be frightening. Being a medical student is marvelous.

That’s where I, the student, was one day in the operating room with the Chief of Surgery, one of my favorite professors and a role model teacher. He was astute, erudite, tall and creative ---- like the day he asked me a memorable question (for me) in front of the rounding group.

I elected to spend a month on his service. He impressed me on many days when I attended his lectures or followed him on teaching rounds.

To be close to him for a month, his resident the only other, was a dream rotation. Of course he wore a three-piece suit. He rounded with a vigorous spring in his step and a cornucopia of information that spilled encyclopedia like.

I was anxious and eager on that first day when I met him and his resident on the surgical floor at 7 AM. Come to think of it, that’s the way it was almost every day. They were days of being a “real” physician, out of the classroom and on the wards with actual patients.

As for that creative question? One morning, as he was examining a patient, he asked the group, “What is the best way to determine the difference between a partial and a complete rectal prolapse?”

I could not believe my luck. Just the evening before I was reading of the issue because I knew one of his patients had a rectal prolapse.

Silence. A resounding group quiet met his question. I knew the answer (medical details not important for this treatise). I inched forward from the back of the pack and raised my trembling, sweaty palm to my shoulder. He looked in my direction.

“You.” He twisted to see my name tag. “You, Iannuccilli, You. What do you think? You have your hand raised, don’t you?”

“I do.”

“Well?”

I answered correctly, he shared a twit of a smile and preached, “Yes, Good. Good. Okay, Okay,” as he looked at his senior resident, who had his head down. I was in. Or so I thought at that moment.

The next day, he asked me to first-assist him in the operating room on a simple procedure, the ligation of a varicose vein. I was thrilled and anxious . . . again. My sweaty, med student palms made it difficult for the nurse to put on rubber gloves over my raised hands.

The procedure was done with spinal anesthesia, so the patient was awake. “Good morning, Mrs.___. Are you OK?”

“Yes, Doctor.”

“Come stand by me Dr. Iannuccilli.” He called me doctor! I inched close enough that our surgical gowns were touching.

After the patient was prepped and draped, He made the incisions and isolated the vein to be tied off. He asked me to cut the sutures. “Not too close to the knot, Dr.” I did it. Success.

Then the second tie slipped off and blood immediately poured into the wound. My inclination was to turn away but stupidly I uttered the dastardly word, “Oops.”

My professor quickly controlled the situation, stopped the bleeding and stood back.

He leaned to the awake patient and calmly uttered, ‘Everything is fine, Mrs.___.”

Then he turned to me. I was drifting away, my knees turning to agar jelly. I felt like the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz after the water was poured on her, fully expecting to melt right into the floor.

He stood back, lowered his hands slowly to his midsection, took a deep confident breath, looked immense and tilted his head toward me. Peering over his glasses, he pontificated, “Doc-tor, there are two things we never say in the operating room, ‘Oops’ and ‘Uh-oh’. Okay with that?”

“Yes, Sir.”

The kind, understanding nurse wiped the sweat from my forehead.

“Okay, let’s move on.”

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