SEVEN
Germs
“Dans les champs de l’observation le hasard ne favorise que les
esprits prepares.”
—Louis Pasteur, 1854With only a few weeks remaining of my surgical internship, I am counting
the days that I am held hostage to the surgeons outside of orthopedics.
Having spent grueling months in the SICU, attending to the most seriously
ill and frail patients, and having survived the endurance tests of vascular
surgery and the transplant service, I can’t believe my good fortune of
ending my intern year on the Plastic Surgery service.
In Plastics, I gloriously sleep almost every night. Even in a major
academic center, much of what we do is elective and aesthetic surgery.
How do you spell relief? P-L-A-S-T-I-C-S. The Plastic surgeons are kind,
relatable, and patient. They even let me sew a little bit, helping me gain
confidence with my burgeoning surgical skills. Granted, I am not closing
critical surgical incisions and traumatic wounds of the face, where the
reputation of a plastic surgeons is made or broken, but I actually feel a
part of a team, and not an ignorant grunt who has nothing to offer.
When you are an intern on call on a busy service (like the transplant
team), there is a virtual guarantee that you will be up all night. On the
transplant service, even if there are no “harvest runs” occurring, the
incessant calls from the surgical floor and outside transplant patients
conspire to keep you awake. In the event that a patient has suffered a
terminal injury in a nearby hospital, and is being kept alive just long
enough to donate their organs, the transplant team springs to action,