serendipti's Diaryland Diary

7:02 p.m. - Wednesday, Jul. 06, 2005

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

no syncope no syncope no syncope

nobody feels like a bigger loser than me.
nobody.
I just scrubbed out of a surgery that I was retracting on. Pt with peritonitis and we resected this huge portion of her ileum and ascending colon. We sliced through her abdomen and there was blood and feces rushing out and we were elbows deep. Cool shit....literally.
So we are in there for maybe an hour, and guess who has to say, uhh....I am going to scrub out, I am a little light headed......oh wait, was I having deja vu? Wasn;t this the exact same thing that happened yesterday during the laproscopic cholecystectomy that I was scrubbed in on? Except yesterday, I fought it, fought it, pretended not to notice the nausea, the beads of perspiration, the hot flushed feeling under my mask....yesterday I fought it until I had the feeling I might keel over on to the sterile field....luckily, the nurses saw me reeling as I reversed away from the surgical table, and yesterday, they flanked me, and half carried me out of the room since all was turning black all around me.
So today, when I had that uh-oh I am getting uncomfortable, please say it ain't so feeling, I decided early on to accept the defeat that is my body, especially since this was an open surgery, not a laproscopic one, and I didn't wait to cause the patient any harm by fighting. So normally, when I think I am going to pass out, which has been happening almost monthly or every other month, I go through a long period of fighting it, where I keep repeating in my head, mantra-like, no sycope, no syncope, no syncope (schmancy med word for fainting).....so today, since yesterday's episode, I did not do my no-syncope mantra, but instead, came out rather early. I love the attention the nurses give me when this happens.....okay, this is facetious, I hate it. They get all worried and scurry about, getting coke or juice or a wet towel, telling me to elevate my legs, sit down....today I got asked if I might be pregnant.....oh, I laughed and laughed and the nurse was like, that might be it, and I was like TURRRUSSSTTTTT ME, there is no chance.

And I hate having to explain. Well....I have my period, and this tends to happen around my period, because I am in a lot of pain, and I bleed a lot, and then also, I am generally hypotensive (low BP) and then I am on an ACE inhibitor, which makes it worse....oh, yeah, I take that cuz I have lupus....no, I am not on prednisone....oh, is that right? one of the GI nurses with Lupus died because her kidneys failed?.....coo....yeah, well I chose this field because I met a lot of asshole docs when I initially got sick........
I hate it, you guys. I hate it so much. The utter lack of control and the feelings of weakness and ineptitude and the ever present, why the hell did you pick this field? the question in my own head and asked by others.
And this is the second day in a row I had to scrub out, with the same resident, so i am going to have to explain the whole lupus-hypotension-menstruation story so that he does not think I am this scrub who cannot handle the sight of blood.....so I must bring up my bloody endometrium.
dammit dammit dammit.
Speaking of scrubs, during this episode (I am still in the OR, waiting for my team to close), I went to check my BP after I downed some coke my cute scrub nurse Salvador bought me, and the nurse in post-op was like, girrl, you okay? your face matches your scrubs (our scrubs are green.)
So the thing is, this is my first night on surgery call, and though I almost fully passed out yesterday and felt like the stuff gushing out of our patient's colon today, I was not about to be like, uhhh, can I go home today? I just couldn't do it.
And here is what I hate, beside most of what I said already. I hate that I cannot take a single advil cuz it is bad for my kidneys. I hate that I can't get on birth control to regulate my cycles from hell, because estrogen flares up lupus. I hate that once a month, for a couple days, I am supposed to anticipate passing out.

I hate that this does not explain why I almost passed out 2 weeks ago. I hate that my parents are worried and will want to fly out here. I hate that I need to tell my resident that I am on my period, that I have lupus, that I feel like ass. I hate scrubbing out. I hate feeling weak and pathetic and knowing that there is no way I should choose something surgically based. I hate that it would take me a while to count up all the syncopal, or near syncopal episodes I have had in the last year. I hate.
in the words of a med peer of ours, I hate it, I hate it, I hate it.
hatefully yours,
signing off like a dog with her tail bewteen her legs,
from the lounge in the OR at Mercy General
menstrually and lupusly and chornically syncopally yours (and also feeling like assly and depressedly yours)
dipti
dipti

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

previous - next