Holy Macaroni!

This morning at around 8:30 one of our patients pulled in to kilometer 38. The Doc had told us on Friday that we would be having a surgery at 10AM Sunday morning. This patient that had pulled in very early was her. Rachel and I had our breakfast and then headed to our house to prepare for the surgery. In our house we have the pharmacy and a small room called the lab. The Doc said that we would be removing the tumor in the lab.

We cleaned up the lab, wiped down the 1 hospital bed we have, and started to prepare the surgery equipment. At exactly 10 AM sharp the Doc was cutting at her lower back. He made his incision and had me hold his retractors so that he could reach in to pull out the tumor. To tell you the truth, this was the first surgery out of 6 that I started to feel queazy in the stomach. I began to sweat, my head felt funny, and I had to keep looking away cause I was afraid of passing out. Thankfully, this feeling went away after five minutes. When he had taken the whole tumor out we handed him the sutures and we were ready to close up the incision.

He puts in the first stitch then looks up at me and hands me the needle and kelley clamp. Surprised, I look at him and say, "Yo?" he smiles and nods yes.

Sweet!! I come over to his side and I sow her up :) It was cool and crazy at the same time. The particular stitch that I did was the one I had practiced over and over. And it was the same one that I watched the Doc use on every patient. When I did this, I just did it with very little thinking. Crazy! I had always dreamt of this moment and at the same time I had dreaded it. I was afraid I would be too scared and shaky; that I wouldn't know what exactly to do. But with the Doc's confidence I could also be confident in myself and do what I had learned to do.

I love it! I want more ha ha