Mrs S has been with us for six weeks, so we and the nursing staff know her pretty well. She's a lovely lady who we all quite enjoy stopping and having a chat with. She was even nice enough to let us take pictures of her not-healing surgical wound for a presentation last week, and wanted to hear all about how it went.
Today, she went to theatre for the umpteenth time, to have her remaining leg amputated, after having to have the infected bypass graft that was keeping the tissue alive removed over the weekend. I walked with the nursing staff escorting her from the ward, just because I was there when the porter came for her. And a little bit because I wanted to show her that we were all rooting for her, because she seemed to have lost her usual stoicism and 'buck up' attitude since the bad news had been broken.
I could have gone into theatre and watched the operation, but I very carefully didn't. It occurred to me afterwards that my excuses were exactly that. While there were a lot of people already, there was nothing stopping me standing at the back too. There were ward jobs to do, but someone else would have done them if i'd asked. I walked slowly away from theatres, after joining the nurse in making reassuring noises and telling Mrs S we'd see her afterwards, and realised I was nervous for her. I was genuinely worried about what would happen, at a personal rather than professional level. The reason I didn't go and watch the surgery was that I cared too much about it's outcome. I couldn't look at the mechanics of a leg on the table without seeing the person it was attached to.
I've always thought that getting too attached would be a pitfall for me. I'm a people person. I'm interested in humanity, not surgical cases. I'm one of those medical students who allows herself to be waylaid by patients' questions and worried faces during ward rounds. I want everyone to be okay. It affects my mood for a little while when a patient dies unexpectedly. I'm only surprised it's taken this long to fall into the aforementioned pit!
Still, on the plus side: I have identified that it could be a problem, and so can distance myself a bit, and if I didn't already know that i'm no kind of a surgeon, I do now. Accentuate the positives, and all...
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Update:
ReplyDeleteThe surgery went really well, and Mrs S spent the evening afterwards with her family around her. A few days later, she's still in quite a bit of pain, but it's under control most of the time. She's much happier, and when we popped in to say goodbye yesterday she was back to her chatty self, and wished us all the best for the future. There's a long way to go until she's fully recovered, but she's heading in the right direction, so hopefully it'll be a happy ending.