Review: A Surgical Tech's `view from above'
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 05 9, 2014
California born author Thomas B. Wright slipped into the Operating Room via enforced courtesy of the US Army lottery in 1971 (Wright was a Conscientious Objector and managed to avoid Vietnam by his assignment as an OR Tech - state-side) and began a ten year history of observing the inner workings of the OR and the casts of characters, interrupted by a stint selling insurance, only to return to the OR for an extended twenty years ensconced with an opportunity to observe, act, and store memories that he shares in this exposé of surgery within the confines of the scrub-before-you-enter hallowed walls.Wright writes as one trained for the pen rather than just the Kelly clamp. In this book he shares more significantly considered information of a highly skilled Surgical Technician than most readers have ever heard. He blends technical information (all the types of instruments, cauterization devices, lasers and the names and traditions associated with them) and blends this with a keen sense of humor. In the early portion of the book her makes a significant statement: `I have seen things. I have seen excellence and pallid mediocrity. I have seen hilarious situations and sadness beyond imagining. In short, the human experience has been laid out before me, prepped and ready for surgery; all I had to do was watch closely.'His discussion of such topics as Conscious Sedation may carry an undercurrent of fear but the dialogue is at times hilarious. `Spare Parts' is a lesson in loss of one of a pair of like organs - either by donation or surgical mishap. `Sometimes a fracture will not heal properly; a condition called non-union. This can be due to chance, or the patient waited too long to have it seen, or it was professionally set by a goatherd in Uzbekistan.' Some of the comments are straight from the comedy circle (depending on which part of the circle you occupy: `I don't know what the fascination with the anus is all about. I always thought of it as a one-way street. Besides, there are germs up there that need to stay up there. Find one in a package of ground beef and millions of dollars of meat gets recalled. Nevertheless people seem to want to put things into it like it's some great mysterious passage to ecstasy....Usually it is a simple matter of dislodging the misplaced cigar case, cucumber, flashlight (on), or (ouch) soda bottle that happened to get a little crooked and wouldn't extract itself' etc. Similar tales of cardiac incidents and surgery, spine surgery, joint surgery, nurses, the sanctity of the 10 minute scrub (`I was at a party where the subject of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder came up. I mentioned that I washed my hands over a dozen times a day. When they learned what I did for a living, I told them I was also a germophobic, but by then the joke was old. Hand washing was, and still is an important part of infection control. From day one we were taught that the first and last thing you do is wash your hands.'), `The Count' so imperative in surgical procedures to assure against `lost instruments', MIS (minimally invasive surgery to Robotic Surgery), Anesthesia, etc.Two audiences for this impressive book - those affiliated with medicine in any form and those outside the walls of the hospital. Informative, beautifully written, and with a keen sense of humor and inside observations of the field of Surgery - and all that goes with it. Highly recommended - especially for docs, nurses and of course techs - and everyone who wonders...Grady Harp, May 14