Orthopedic Surgery

Today is officially the two month date since I’ve been here, even though it’s been nine weeks rather than eight. Ah, almost time to go home!! In regards to work, we got to observe in orthopedic surgery today, which was really cool. Funnily enough, we scrubbed in and I looked over to see the patient because I recognized the x-ray, and it was a girl that we saw twice during our time in orthopedics. She was 17 and had jumped off of a bridge (don’t know the behind story), and bruised her right leg, and snapped both bones in her left leg, which required surgery. We put a “splint” on, made of plaster the first time she came in, and the second time we just checked that it was still on and okay before her surgery. I was kind of glad that I was familiar with this case, and it was so cool to see her surgery.

Although the girl had her leg sliced open in three places, she wasn’t put to sleep! I couldn’t believe it. She had one of those metal things attached to the bed with a blanket over it, restricting her view of the surgery. But, she was awake and conscious listening to all of the drills and smashing noises going on, with a clear view of the x-rays being taken while the doctors worked on her leg. At some points, she was even singing along to the music playing on the radio in theatre. I was in shock. Besides that, it was quite an intense, long and interesting operation.
She needed a plate put into her leg with a few extra screws, because she had snapped both her tibia and fibula and different places. There was a large incision down the front of her leg, probably 10-12 inches in length, another incision on the left side close to her ankle about six inches in length, and a very small incision by her right ankle, about two or three inches long. The operating room looked like a mechanic shop because of all of the drills, tools and screws in tool boxes on the sterile table ready for use. The surgery lasted about two and half hours because of the difficulty of getting both broken bones into the correct positions with the nails and plate. This took quite a while, and quite a bit of fiddling around to get it correct. The doctor had to take some nails out and replace them in slightly new positions to secure the bone in place. It also took a bit to get the plate in the correct position, but with the help of the handy radiologist and her x-ray machine he got it in the right place and screwed it into the bone.

Once he had washed the incisions out, stopped the bleeding with a tourniquet, located the breaks and cut off the jagged edges of the bones, put some screws in, added the plate to the right place and secured that with screws and washed the incision once more, he started to stitch her back up. Because of her breaks and the positions of them, the surgery was a little bit difficult and took a bit longer than they had expected. To stop the bleeding, they put a tourniquet on her thigh, and towards the end of the surgery, they had to take it off because it had been on for too long. This made it even more difficult to finish because her leg was constantly bleeding and they had to consistently wipe it away. But, they eventually got it all squared away and started to stitch her back up.
The incisions they had made were quite large, so they were gaping at this point from all of the work they had done inside with holding the skin back and open. To get the incision to close nicely, they had to first stitch the tendon and muscles down, stitch the skin together as much as they could, and then staple the skin together to keep it that way. The top incision was the only one they used staples on. They were able to get the other two incisions closed by stitching the inside first, and then stitching the skin together. I thoroughly enjoyed this surgery, and was excited to see the next one that would be taking place shortly.

On our break, we decided to have some tea. Across the street from the hospital is an elementary school, or primary school as it is referred to here. Their school bell is terrible and on multiple occasions we have all thought, and Miles has accurately put it into words, what it sounds like. The first time he did it was hilarious. The school bell rang, and he said “Prison break! Just kidding, Manenberg primary school”. Manenberg is the city that the hospital is in, and it’s pretty much a gang town. That is why we see so many trauma cases and drug usage etc. Anyways, the school bell literally sounds like a prison break. It’s the most terrible thing I’ve heard in a long time. So, that’s that we listened to while having tea; it was exquisitely lovely.

The next patient needed a metal rod put in the whole length of his leg for purposes of a knee surgery. This was a bit more brutal of a surgery. To get the rod in the length of the leg, the doctors had to first put this huge tool in that was the length of the leg, but about triple the thickness, just to open a space for the rod to fit, and then they had to hammer the rod down, and it was loud!! Metal to metal hammering is super loud and clings in a way that would have made me pass out if I was the patient. I can’t imagine listening to that happening to me! Anyhow, the doctors pushed his leg off of the bed so that it was dangling, which is apparently a good position to hammer the rod in. They just had to use a lot of force and it looked pretty bad. We had to leave before the surgery was over, but it was pretty interesting as well.

The three of us headed to the airport after work to pick up our rental for the weekend. Lauren leaves on Saturday, so we wanted a car to do a few things before that. How boring would it be to be in such a beautiful place, but to sit in the house on your last few days there? While we were waiting for the rental to be ready, we went into the airport to introduce Lauren to a very popular chain restaurant called Wimpys here. Miles and I ate there a lot in Durban; I think it is more prevalent in that area. They have the best milkshakes ever, and we wanted Lauren to try one before she left. We got our car, and went home to get ready for the evening; we were having dinner with Marion and Avril on the waterfront.

To get to the restaurant, we had to walk through the Victoria Warf mall, and on the way I had an incident occur that has never before happened to me and I am ashamed to say has now. So as we are walking, I notice a handbag in a store through the front glass window. It was on the right side wall of the store if you were to look straight in, and I am walking away from that direction or to the left. The bag was on the bottom shelf on the right side wall, so I am walking forward, but looking straight back at the wall trying to figure out what it says on the handbag. As I am walking, suddenly I am forcibly stopped, and as I turn around to see what it is, it’s a trashcan!!! I was so busy looking behind me that I totally ran into a huge trashcan with my full body. I obviously couldn’t walk anymore because the trashcan was blocking my way, so I turned my head forward (where it should have been in the first place), and place my hands out in front of me to catch my fall, or so I thought, and gripped the sides of this massive trashcan. I immediately started laughing as hard as I’ve laughed in a long time; how ridiculous is it that I just ran into a trashcan in the middle of the mall that is as visibly tall as my waist? Lauren has said that we are all picking up each other’s worst qualities and I am starting to agree. Miles loses everything, Lauren is super clumsy, and luckily they haven’t noticed a pass-on from me!

Avril and Marion chose the cutest restaurant to have our final dinner at; Salero. It had a lovely view of the water, but it was pouring rain, which was unfortunate. We still had such a fun evening full of laughing and enjoyable conversations. My trashcan incident was a forbidden story lol. I’m going to miss our group! I can’t believe Lauren is leaving. It’s going to make things so hard for me; the last week is going to be terrible. I’m going to be in such anticipation and want nothing more than to get home.