GujjuPunju.com

Yes yes, this is one of those hiatuses I am taking yet AGAIN from blogsville….and this time it is not because I lost interest, or I have nothing more to say, but because I am about to be buried under preparations for TWO big exams! One in January and one in March, not to mention the finals in December. I won’t be blogging atleast till January now. Shall try to be around your blogs and comment and be on yahoo messenger, but shall not be posting anything. Hope I shall come back and see you all still here! Dont lose the love for Utterances….I will be back yearning for your comments Hugs!

Adieu, till the next time.

Sorrie sorrie sorrie..this is sooo late! I had written almost 3/4ths of this the very next day but then did not get time to finish it! Life has been very busy dont ask! So here it is the remaining part…hope you all are still inspired enough to read it. WARNING: long post ahead!

Continued from before…The nurse anesthetist put a mask on his face to start the sedation while the anesthesiologist put in the IV. Soon, he calmed down and slowly very slowly his eyes shut. We released him and pretty soon he was on his way to some land that I have never known.

and now….

The mother wished us good luck and was rolled out of the room. DrH, the oh-so-laid-back soul that he is, rubbed his hands and said, “hmm lets get some music going on here before we start.” Out came the pod, speakers and all, and we were jamming to latest ummrican pop.
We took x-rays on the patient and I got the honorable duty of hitting the button when they said “ready to expose”(yes yes…thats the terminology! DJ back off!) . All of us were weighed down by these super-heavy lead covers to protect us from radiation.
After that, DrH said, okay girl, lets get scrubbed up.
Me: “Huh, whats that?”
DrH: “this is when you get your hands sterile or try the best you can and put on the sterile gown.”
Me: “Do I need to do this too?”
DrH: “well yea, you and I are gonna be working…… you thought you were just observing? you are gonna be working on this boy”
Me: all freaked out “whoa! I have to clean his teeth? i umm well…”

Giving me no time to talk any further he walked out of the room and I scrambled to catch up.

DrH took me outside the OR and we put some uber sterile lotion on our hands scrubbing our nails in first. We had to get some lotion in our palms, dig nails of the other hand in there and scrub it all over the hand. Mind you though, once we scrubbed down till the elbow, we were not allowed to scrub back up. Also, once both hands were scrubbed up, we were not allowed to let those hands go below waist level. Don’t ask me why! but then it was me and him entering the OR with hands in the air, looked like we were getting ready for a fight with our fists in the air. The assistant came forward and put the gown on DrH, and put one on me. Now, there is also a special way to tie the gown to yourself. here, sterile on sterile is the rule! We got special sterile gloves and I was getting ready to put them on and……”whoa whoa whoa..wait..you need to make sure now that everything you touch is sterile and you touch with a sterile GLOVE ON! AND… there is a special technique to put these gloves on”

–”wokay!” I learnt the special technique which entailed me not touching ANY part on the outside of the gloves (that were half folded) and putting them on. How did I do it? I dont know! Miracle maybe.

Pretty soon, I was covered from head to toe, hand to shoulder with some sort of covering. oh wait sterile covering mind you! DrH is extremely tall, I am guessing around 6″5 so he raised the patients bed pretty high. I, on the other hand had to get a step stool to get to that level so that I could see something or ANYTHING! With DrH on one side and me on the other, we were ready to roll! It was showtime!

It was only then that I actually took in the picture before me. Here was a fourteen year old boy covered up in protective barriers from head to toe. His eyes were taped on with cotton rolls and a catheter was connected to him, not to mention the multitude of IVs going in and out connecting the huge machine monitoring all of his vital signs. He was COMPLETELY (and that is no exaggeration) covered in some kind of protective barrier. The only part of his body that was visible to me was the oral cavity.I shrugged for a second and for the first time thought, this is it! I am here with this patient who doesnt know me, who has been put to sleep and will wake up not knowing or remembering anything we did to him. With a deep breath, I took the ultrasonicc instrumentt that DrH handed over and was thinking how to start. I tried to open the patients jaw but it was as hard as a rock!

I could not move ti and get his mouth open. DrH laughed and took a pair of pliers and put its rubber edges inside his mouth and literally yanked it open. I could see the amount of force he used to do that! We were greeted by a huge tongue that would make working on his teeth impossible. We took a handle-like instrument, pushed the tongue underneath it and tied it to the pliers with a cloth! Now we had oneside of his mouth free to work on. Allright K, this is not your one hour cleaning appointment, I give you three minutes per quad to do this cleaning. Get inside the gums to remove soft and hard deposits and remember this might be the ONLY cleaning this person might get in five years or so. Okay I got that….but three minutes per quad?!?!??! A quad is a set of eight teeth. Suppose you divide the mouth in four equal parts then each part is a quad. “Allright go to town, K”
“Ummm umm okay okay..am starting….” I turned the instrument on, it whirred to life and zoom zoom zoom…true to the orders, I took three minutes per quad. many a gingiva (gums for the uninitiated might have been ripped during that..okay just kidding) The adrenaline rush was so high that I did not realize I was going so fast!

Once that was done, we did a comprhensive exam and found that he needed some 18 feelings on a total of 16 teeth. We took half side of the mouth and DrH, with his burr(drill for a simple word) went in and scooped out all the decay on that half. Then with the help of the attending surgeon, restorationss - amalgamms, and resin were put in to fill the cavities.

Then all of a sudden the nurse anesthetist calls out: “is he moving?”
DrH and I were so engrossed in our work that we didnt realize and saw that the patients was flinching a little!!! He started vibrating and trying to move his strapped body. The nurse was up, instruments were put away, and all attention was again in putting him back to sleep!
“Vitals?”
“Okay”
“Whats wrong?”
“Am not sure…lemme figure it out”
And I am waiting for him to pounce up from his sleep and scream!
“okay we are going back down”
Phew! Back to work!
Amazingly, I did not realize where time was going by, until DrH said, we are half an hour out! A glance at the clock in the room made me realize that I had been in there for 2 hours now! Half an hour later, the wrap was as interesting as the set up.

When we were ready to wake him up. Again;). A quick call for the anesthesiologist and two assistants (BIG hefty men for sure!) he was unstrapped and all the coverings taken off. His catheter was taken out and cleaned out, he face was cleaned and it seemed like the team was slowly putting life back in him. We could sense him moving and then all of a sudden…
He was up! He raised his head and all of us were working at keeping him calm. Soon he realized he was helpless and relented. A mobile bed was called for and aligned next to his bed. “Okay everyone ready? ” “Yup!’ “Okay 1, 2, 3!” and he was in the mobile bed.

The anesthetists, DrH, the attending surgeon, and myself…all of us wheeled the cart to an area where patients’ coming out of anesthesia were monitored until stable. We left him there with the nurse and went to talk to his parents! The mom was really really nice, almost as if she was used to this being done to her son. “So was this first time interesting and exciting for you?”
I was beaming: ” OH YEA!”

Lunchtime! and then another patient. Day in the OR was too good. Besides the fact that I felt important walking around the hospital in surgery scrubs, I had the most amazing experience that only very few people get close to i.e. being on the giving end in a surgery room, not to mention the sight of your name on the OR as attending clinicians!

Leaving all that aside, at the end of the day..the most rewarding thing is the feeling that you were able to help someone. You were able to do something for someone using your skills and education. Ofcourse, I cannot wait to get paid for doing it….I am, however, content and satisfied in knowing that I made a difference in my own little way.

Yesterday was the Gujju New Year and I remember mummy always told me to study or do nice things on new years day because then you would do that the whole year. The whole family had loads of fun and tried to be happy because according to mom, dad, grandpa, and grandma, doing nice things on new years meant nice things throughout the year. So what did I do at this new year?

Woke up at 6:30am and got dressed in scrubs to go to the hospital. No, no I was not sick or anything, but I had my rotations at the hospital this past few weeks and yesterday was my very first day in the OR (operating room), more commonly known as OT(operation theatre) in India. Now what would a dental team do in OR? I wondered that too until recently. Usually there are patients that have profound mental rretardation or are auttistic and cannot take good care of their teeth. These patients have to be put to sleep and operated on. During this time, the dental team accomplishes a lot of things like fillings, cleaning, debridement, extractions, surgery, all kinds of stuff.

It was my first time and I was pretty excited. The whole scene of being in the hospital near different ORs, seeing surgeons in their green scrubs, gowns, masks, hairnets, shoecovers..it was all pretty exciting to my soul. The doc I was working with, DrH was nowhere to be seen and our first patient for the day was a fourteen yr old and I went into his pre-op and talked to his parents. The mother asked me, “So is this your first time in the OR?” The shy me said, “actually yes it is.” — mother: “well I hope it is pretty exciting for you”–”thanks, have done it a bunch of times but just not in the OR”

The nurse anesthetist walked in followed by Dr. H.
DrH: “Hey girl, whats up…ready to roll?”
Me: “uh huh”
DrH: “allright then we get started soon, go around the corner to rm blah blah”
Me: “thanks”
DrH was pretty good to work with he was a resident and should be around 26-27….twas great to be working with a young tall handsome doc

I walk around the surgery rooms and feel oh so important that I was going to be in one of them. I walked into room bb and as soon as I walk in, the surgery assistant goes “mask mask mask!!!” ME:”huh? where? I dont see one in here.” SA: “thats coz you gotta have the mask on before you get in here. Walk out and its on the right. Make sure you get one with eye-shields”
I walk out and pick up a mask and walk in. Remember those rooms you always see in TVs and in surgeries shown on movies…huge lights on the top, lots of wires, and medical equipment, a huge sterile bed, people in green overalls! It was all there. I felt pretty overwhelmed because everyone knew what they were doing. The assstant was setting tables up, Dr. P who was the attending surgeon was setting up the movable cart, the anesthesiologist(who was Indian by the way) was checking the settings on this huge machine that I later realized would be connected to the patient’s IV and to monitor the patient’s vital signs. I just stood there with my mask on and took everything in. DrH walked in and said, “are we ready to go?” He got thumbs up signs from all the other three in the room. He looked at me and said, “you ready for this?” Me: “yep!” DrH: “allright then, its showtime!”

“showtime?” I think it takes only special people to say “showtime” before a surgery when you don’t know how long its gonna run, or how the patient is going to be, or what the whole deal entails. Showtime it was.

I waited with bated breath as they rolled the patient in. Four nurses followed by the nurse anesthetist walked in pushing a wheeled bed/chair. The patient’s mother was in the chair all dressed up in a gown and hat with her son in her lap, holding him tight. They aligned the chair next to the operating bed and everyone put gloves on. I followed suit.
The four nurses, three of whom were male, picked the son up, and put him on the bed. He started struggling and soon all of us were scrambling to calm him down. I was at the end of the table and pinned his feet down to the bed. The nurse anesthetist put a mask on his face to start the sedation while the anesthesiologist put in the IV. Soon, he calmed down and slowly very slowly his eyes shut. We released him and pretty soon he was on his way to some land that I have never known.

It was showtime.

….to be continued

Here is wishing you and your family a very Happy Diwali. May this festival of lights bring with it all the light and joy to everyone.

It is also the Gujju New Year tomorrow..so here is wishing a very Happy and Prosperous New year as well.

I wish I was in India…..nothing like a Diwali at home.