Thoughts on Surgery

I have never wanted to be a surgeon. I'm sitting here, reading about the anatomy of the brain and it reminded me of the time in Allied Health that I got to shadow the neurosurgeon. Most of the day was boring, until around 4:00pm, when a trauma patient was rushed in. If I recall correctly, he was a construction worker who fell off a ladder and landed on his head. This produced a subdural hematoma - a buildup of blood in the brain that was raising his intracranial pressure. This is life threatening, because if pressure in the brain raises too high, the brainstem gets pushed into the neck. You really, really do not want your brainstem (the thing controlling stuff like breathing) in your neck. The only way to relieve the pressure is to drill a hole in the skull and drain off the blood.

So, for about three hours (after a long school day, no less) I hovered at a safe distance and watched the surgeon cut into this man's skull, painstakingly dab all the blood out, and then replace the piece of skull and skin. I thought it was fascinating. But never once did it cross my mind "This is something I could do!" or "Wow, I want to be a surgeon." The thought never has really occurred to me - I think surgery is neat, but some its never seemed like something I could do or would want to do.

This is sometimes strange, because I think it sets me apart from a lot of my classmates. It is really not uncommon to hear someone talk about how they were relieved such and such class didn't matter towards surgery, or how types of surgery are different or how they really want to be X type of surgeon. Even more people haven't ruled it out as a possibility. I'm not really sure what drives people to chose this or least, what drives some of my classmates to it. Many of them are very outgoing people that seem like they'd be excellent dealing with patients. But really, my record with understanding other people's motivations isn't very good, so what do I know?