How to Do a Liver Transplant Read Online Free PDF Page A

I tied a surgical mask over my face. The nurse, obviously a bit tired of teaching surgical novices, rolled her eyes, clearly indicating all of this was a little beneath her. She began to instruct me on the finer points of a full five-minute surgical handwash.
    â€˜Keep your hands up and elbows down,’ she barked. ‘Let the soap drip off and don’t touch anything!’ My nervous energy was causing my knees to knock together and I thought I had wet my pants but it was just the water dribbling off my elbows and down my leg. When she had had enough of watching me spray water everywhere, the nurse grasped the back of my shirt and frog marched methrough the heavy double doors into the operating theatre. I held my dripping wet hands aloft, just as I had seen on TV medical dramas. The nurse then grumbled her way through the instructions for the ‘more complicated than it appears’, gown and gloving process.
    â€˜Dry your hands with the little towel. Don’t touch anything. Now, pick the gown up in the tips of your fingers, let it fall open, one arm in and then the other,’ the nurse demanded. She roughly spun me around by the shoulders and tied the back of the gown tightly, like she was lacing me into a corset. ‘Now, pick up your gloves and put them on without touching them on the outside.’ Of course, in my haste to please her, I hadn’t dried my hands properly (or they were damp with sweat) and my fingers went in all the wrong holes. I could tell the frustrated nurse wanted to grab me and shove the gloves on the right way or put them where the sun doesn’t shine. Luckily for me, she could no longer touch me because I was now officially ‘sterile’. Finally, after a full ten minutes, I had everything on and I was ready to ‘operate’. I approached the operating table and then, without thinking, I rubbed my nose with my now sterile hand. The nurse swore and grabbed me by the shoulders once again, spinning me around and ripping my gown off in one movement, like a stripper at a bachelor party. I had completely contaminated myself and had to go and start the whole process again. The nurse turned on her heel and walked off in disgust, leaving me to it.
    When I finally got to the operating table, the surgery was well underway. Dr Smith was standing on the patient’s right and told me to take my place in an impossibly small area wedged between his back and a tall metal table suspended over the foot end of the bed and laden with rows of shiny surgical instruments. I was so close to Dr Smith that every time he moved I had to take a tiny step backward otherwise his hip would touch my belly. I was not quite ready for this invasion of my personal space but I soon learned that this closeness is not given a second thought and that surgeons leave their inhibitions at the door. This proximity to each other soon makes you understand why it is not a good idea to have garlic for lunch.
    â€˜Here Kel, hold this,’ Dr Smith muttered. His eyes did not leave the TV screen as he grabbed my hand and placed it onto the scissor-like handle of a long instrument protruding from the patient’s abdomen. I had no idea what I was holding but hold it I did, with a white-knuckle grip, determined not to move a muscle. I was going to be the best instrument holder they had ever seen. There was one slight problem, though. I didn’t appreciate that not moving my hand did not necessarily mean that I should not move anything else. My extreme stillness quickly resulted in the pooling of blood in my legs and within a few minutes I saw a dark veil come down in front of my eyes. I tried to stifle an incredible urge to vomit. I managed to utter the words, ‘I feel sick …’ before I felt myself falling and the lights wentout. Fortunately for the patient on the operating table, I fell backwards onto the floor and not face first into the wound. I woke up a few minutes later on a trolley