Heart Surgery... No Big Deal.

Well this week started out a little rough. Between school and missing home, I definitely wasn't in the best of moods. To top it off they expected us to be at the train station at 7am this morning (pshh, please we are college students). But I can honestly say without a doubt, it was entirely worth it. We got to the hospital and immediately were directed to change into scrubs. We changed, and headed out to the OR rooms. I volunteered to go into one of the first surgeries... A fistula extraction (at least thats what they told me in broken english that it was called); not exactly glamourous. From there, an anesthesiologist pulled me aside and allowed me to help him prep the next patient for surgery. He inserted an epidural, a couple IVs, a Trach tube, and calmly stated "Oooh, looks like I found the heart" when causing slight atrial fibrillation from a superior vena cava catheter. He even allowed me to ventilate the patient for a short time. From here, I had a coffee break and then found a double coronary bypass surgery to watch. I go to stand about three feet away from the guys heart still beating inside his chest when the doctors casually placed him on cardio-pulmonary bypass. After causing ventricular fibrillation to stop the heart (basically killing the guy) the surgeon looks at his colleagues and makes a joke about how the guy is overweight and they can't sew his leg back up (AS THE PATIENT HAS HIS CHEST CRACKED OPEN IN FRONT OF HIM WITH NO HEART BEAT). Really though, all the doctors doing miraculous things everyday just act like its "just another day at the office"-- which I suppose it is for them.