"Alright, We're Going to Need Some Power Tools"

On Monday, I saw my first surgery! I was a little apprehensive before the surgery because I was a little afraid that I would start to feel dizzy during the procedure, but I managed to stay in the room for both of the surgeries I saw. This was pretty astounding, as the first procedure was a great example of the very non-delicate art of surgery.

We were watching a typical surgery on a guy who had fractured his tibia in a motorcycle accident two years earlier and had to have a plate planted and screwed into his tibia in order to help the healing of his leg. Normally, these patients would not have the plate removed, as it is not harmful to them, but the patient requested to have it removed, as it was bothering him whenever he was wearing his boots, to ride his motorcycle... Smart. Anyways, we were watched as the surgeons removed the screws and the plate from his leg. Since I had never seen a surgery before, I thought that they would open up the whole leg, delicately remove the nails and plate, and then sew up the leg, all while the heart rate monitor was crashing and the shock paddles were being pulled out to save his life.

What I expected:

What I actually saw:

This did not happen though. What we actually saw was pretty much the opposite of what I expected. First off, the surgery was minimally invasive, obviously since they only needed to remove some screws and a plate. The removal of the screws was a little bit more rugged than what I expected. Most of the screws came out pretty easily, with a screw driver, but there was one that was creating problems. The last screw was stripped, so they could not remove it as easily as the others. They went from hammering in an indention, pretty forceful hammering, to trying to force the screwdriver, applying a nice amount of force to the leg. When that didn't work, they got the power tools out! Unsurprisingly, the power tools didn't work at this point. Finally, they decided to remove the plate and then deal with the screw. The removal was pretty, rough, and I was a little surprised at the method used to remove the plate, which was to just pull really hard on the plate until it exited the leg through the little hole that the last screw was in. When they yanked the plate out I thought I would have to go take a breather, but, surprisingly, I was alright. They then were able to carve out a little of the bone and then clamp on the screw and remove it from the bone.

The next procedure was supposed to be super minimally invasive but it ended up being just minimally invasive. The patient had a rather large fracture in his shoulder and the doctors were just going to go through a small incision in the middle of the chest and insert a wire to the should and then close it off.

So, the visit to the clinic was a pretty fun one and I learned a lot from it!

You stay classy, Germany.