ONE
Trevor
“Givehim two more milligrams and stay with me on this. I need him to breathe. Breathe now!” I ordered.
I was living my dream. I wanted to be a doctor my entire life, practicing when I was younger on all my stuffed animals. I wanted to be the best of the best. The man who was there to save lives. The man who came through when no one else did.
I wanted to be a doctor who defied the odds and who brought patients back when they had no hope left.
And so far, at thirty-four years old, I had come close to achieving that dream.
I’d succeeded in certain parts of the dream.
I had gone through medical school to become a surgeon. I applied myself to both my schooling, as well as my life experience, learning as I went along. It gave me the ability to learn through everything I went through.
I never went through any experience I wasn’t absolutely determined to take something away from, and it was a habit that saved lives. This far in the game, when I worked with someone who was on the very brink of death, I was able to draw on the past experiences I dealt with and do things no one could teach me in a classroom setting.
It was because of that I was able to push through the split-second panic that filled the operating room as our patient that morning started slipping during the middle of the operation. I was an oncologist, so I had to admit, I was a little more used to losing patients than I wanted to ever experience.
Cancer was a monster that took far too many good people away from their loved ones, that was for damn sure.
Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to fight cancer and help heal countless patients who came to me for help. It wasn’t easy, not when I came to know each of these people and their families like friends. It hurt me when I lost someone, in a different way than it hurt their loved ones, but there were few things that compared to the glory I felt when I was able to proclaim someone to be cancer free.
I never took the credit of being the miracle worker myself, but I definitely was given that praise enough. It hadn’t gone to my head, but I was able to talk myself into being calm when we were in situations like this.
And that composure saved more lives than I wanted to admit.
The nurses in the OR were lifesavers along with me. There was no way I could do half the things I did in the OR if it wasn’t for my team working with me. But, they needed that leadership in the room. They had to have that singular person to look to for direction during the crises, but when that person was there, I had witnessed more than one person make a life saving decision in a matter of milliseconds.
And that’s what happened.
It was like watching a work of art with the way the nurses worked together to keep our patient stable while in the middle of the surgery. There were so many things that could go wrong, it wasn’t even funny to think about.
But, the heartrate monitor started steadying, and soon the rhythmic beating of our patient’s heart resumed normalcy. It shouldn’t have been a dangerous surgery, but any time anyone is under anesthesia, there’s a chance something could go wrong.
“He’s stabilizing, shouldn’t be long now,” Annie said with a smile. “Thank God we caught it early before he really started fading. I don’t know if we could have gotten him back under control if we hadn’t caught it early.”
“I want you to keep the steady flow of medication going for the duration of the procedure. I hoped we’d be able to bypass that, but it looks like we’re going to have to compensate.”
“Already have it going,” Kelly announced. She was feeding the medication slowly into the IV bag, and I nodded. I didn’t have to tell them they were doing a good job. They knew they were, and I was proud to work with them. They all knew their jobs and did it well, making each of us proud members of our team.
Hearing the vitals stabilizing was one of the best things in the world, and I was pleased. We weren’t out of the woods yet, but with the most threatening part of the surgery out of the way, it wouldn’t be long now before we’d be able to sew our patient back together and be able to send him out into recovery.
There were congratulations going around the room, and I wasn’t surprised.
Even if it wasn’t entirely unusual for us to bring a patient back from the brink of death, we were always there to celebrate with each other every time it happened.
I held my head high, and I sat with my attention entirely on the patient for the final few moments of waking him up after the surgery. It had been such a routine, standard procedure, there was no reason to believe it would be anything but easy to see him right through waking up and moving forward with his day.
Of course, I’d have to give the nurse the rundown of what the family should know before I sent her out to get the family and take them to the room to see their loved one. At the same time, I prepared myself for the bombardment of questions I would be getting when I said I was happy to answer any questions or explain anything to the best of my knowledge.
Nothing beat how difficult it was for me to face the questions that were sure to come that didn’t have a textbook answer. Those were the questions often asked by little kids, and they were the ones that were the hardest to answer.
No one in the room ever corrected the child for being so forward with what they’d asked, and we all knew that was because of the fact no one else in the room wanted the patient to be sick, and if there was someone else in the room who was willing to ask those hard questions, it got the parents the answers they were hoping for without the commitment to what was said.
No one would ever accuse a child of being heartless or tacky, and it gave me the chance to really pause and think about my own reaction before I moved forward with speaking with the family. If there was good news, it wasn’t hard to show it to the rest of the group. I loved to see the family celebrating the good news of their loved one being on the mend.
On the other hand, when I had nothing but bad news to share with them, I was able to give enough clues to the little ones in the family – if they were forced to be the speakers, that is – and told the rest of the family what they were hoping not to hear.