O.R.: The True Story of 24 Hours in a Hospital Operating Room
by By Colen, B. D.
Category: Health & Fitness , General

Every year, almost 11 million Americans are wheeled through the doors of the mysterious world of a hospital operating room, where a team of specialists perform one of scores of medical procedures. Some are routine, others are astoundingly complicated and delicate, but all are absolutely fascinating.In this gripping, minute-by-minute account of 24 hours in the operating suite of North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, New York, Pulitzer Prize-winning Newsday correspondent B. D. Colen takes us into the windowless, tile-walled realm that patients see for only a short while before the anesthesiologist puts them to sleep. This is the vividly detailed portrait of a world in which both the mysterious and the miraculous are all in a day's work ... and of the real men and women who daily face these split-second, life-and-death decisions. We hear their stories and share their triumphs and their tragedies. We watch a plastic surgeon lovingly reconstruct a baby's severe cleft palate, correcting one of nature's mistakes. We share the fears of a woman whose radical cancer surgery may leave her unable to use her vocal cords. We witness a bullet being removed from a teenager's brain. We view with awe as doctors employ high-tech fiber optics, using a miniature video camera and TV monitor to guide their scalpels during abdominal surgery. We watch an emergency coronary bypass, an amputation, and a wide variety of other operations.We also meet the people behind the masks the doctors, nurses, and anesthesiologists who make up this dedicated staff. There is head nurse Diane Potenza, the no-nonsense den mother of the O.R. who puts both residents and chiefs of staff in their places ... Tony Tortolani, who has overcome his working-class background and the objections of prejudiced teachers to become a top cardiac surgeon ... Nancy Epstein, a second-generation neurosurgeon who has battled fierce sexism in a male-dominated profession ... and anesthesiologist Rob LaPorta, the first member of his family to attend college and a man who is not afraid to talk openly about the sometimes conflicting motivations that drive physicians. Through these people, who are at once extraordinary and ordinary, Colen reveals the complicated mosaic that is daily life in a modern operating room.