Tuesday, November 15, 2011

How to be in Many Places at Once



In Anesthesia, we provide 'coverage' for the hospital. There are many things that require the services of anesthesiologists. How do we do it, and what is it like?

Well, it starts with a good guess. There is a schedule of cases made the day before. Everyone has it. PreOp gets all the charts ready. Sometimes anesthesia gets a copy with all the room assignments made on it in advance. Then you can make plans, possibly even contacting your patient the night before to reassure them before surgery, and also ask any questions medically that may have been a concern for you.

Unfortunately, life is not scheduled. Some cases take long. Some patients forget not to eat and we cancel their case. Some are late. Some never show up. Some are delayed because of a surgical emergency in the case before theirs, or possibly with their surgeon at another hospital. And, some people did not know in advance they would have need of surgery. For example, a trauma patient. Or someone with an appendectomy.

How about having a baby? Well, that part of anesthesia is pretty consistent. Because there are not one but two lives at stake, at most hospitals there is always an anesthesiologist in house. Some take call from home, not more than twenty minutes from the hospital. The same is true for the doc covering the main OR overnight.

What if it's busy? We have a list. The line up changes every day. We call in two, then three. There are only two OR teams staffed at night though. In the Main OR.

Once, when I was a teacher, I had two rooms going. I had a resident in each room, and one was not stable so I was in that room a majority of the time.

The trauma beeper went off, and next thing I knew, down the hall was the trauma team rolling a gurney with a six year old girl and Chief Resident holding pressure on her leg.

She had walked into a sliding glass door and was in a pool of blood, her face white as a sheet.

So, I started that case. I got an extra i.v., started an arterial line, intubated her, and transfused blood in no particular order. All of it was in less than ten minutes. We never had to code her. I 'caught up' with the blood and the surgeons discovered a femoral artery laceration and got control of the bleeding.

I saved her life. And no one will ever know it.

Due to billing restrictions, I could only be in two places at the same time, supervising residents. My buddy came in from home, since we called him in, and his name went on the records as the anesthesiologist. I never signed a thing, although I charted all of it.

That is how you can be in three places at the same time as an anesthesiologist. Technically, I was.

It is my understanding that when people ascend, they shall be able to be in multiple places at once.

My psychic development teacher said once she saw Jesus, and he split himself into twelve Jesuses, and then put himself back, demonstrating that things are VERY DIFFERENT outside of the three dimensions! LOL

Let me finish with a story from the OR I heard today.
There was a patient that would not wake up. The anesthesiologist was trying and trying. This large patient just was sleepy as ever after surgery and the whole team had been standing around for a long time waiting for them to wake up.

A scrub tech came over and whispered something in the patients ear. The patient awoke with a start, opened both eye wide, and moved to the gurney when asked.

Everyone wondered what the scrub tech had said. He would not say a word of it to anyone for weeks.

What was it?

"You're dead and I am Jesus".

Hope you enjoyed that joke as much as I did.

Namaste,

Reiki Doc