Medical Miracles

I was in the OR this morning because we were doing a prostate implant procedure (implanting radioactive seeds in the prostate gland as a treatment for prostate cancer), and I am just getting started learning the physics end of how this is done. After we were finished, the senior physicist and I visited another operating room, because the doctor in there is a neighbor of hers and we saw him on our way in. He was doing a heart transplant. We got there right as they were unpacking the donor heart from the bucket they transport it in. It was really amazing to see in person (as opposed to the times I've seen this on TV), and also very sobering (knowing that someone had to die for that donor heart to become available). We had an excellent view of the two doctors preparing the donor heart for the procedure (cleaning up the artery and vein connections). Then they let us peek over the surgical drapes at the patient's open chest as they got ready to take the diseased heart out. We were standing where the anesthesia cart is, near the patient's head. You could look in to the surgical site and see his heart beating as the doctors worked on the nearby great blood vessels. It was a unique experience, and I am thankful that these doctors let us take such a detailed look. The mood in the OR was different than what I am used to -- no chatter, lots of respect for the donor heart, and confident precision on the part of the medical staff. (For less life-threatening procedures, the mood in the OR is more lively.) I didn't stick around for the rest of the procedure. I wanted to get out of their way, plus I was tired from standing up for hours and very hungry. Seeing the opened chest was not as gory as I imagined it could be, and I felt more respectful than grossed out. But... wow. How many workdays include something like this?