Medicinal Thoughts on Medicine

I went to Utah last weekend for Grandma's funeral.  All I can say is that it was lovely and she had picked out her own pink casket.  All other thoughts and feelings haven't settled enough to articulate.

***Disclaimer***These are just thought's I've been having lately.  They have nothing to do with any actual cases my husband has had or things he has encountered.  I've actually requested that he tell me about work only in generalities because, not being a doctor, I think it's gross.


In the mean time, I thought I'd share some thoughts I'd had about medicine recently.  And no these thoughts have nothing to do with the delivery system of healthcare (Affordable Care Act).  Mostly I've been thinking about how mind blowing it is that people have surgeries at all.  Before I left it in the back seat of my grandparent's car (different set than above) I was reading the biography of the Mayo Brothers.  Interesting book.  I had only gotten through the part of Dr. WW Mayo (the father).  He lived during a bridge time where when he first started practicing medicine abdominal surgeries were unheard of and extremity surgeries were mostly just for amputations.  Then during his career lifetime he first read about then saw and then improved on the surgical technique of ovarectomy. Or however that is spelled. When he first did it the only reason was that the ovarian tumor was going to kill the lady anyway so she said to give it a shot.  She figured as most physicians did at the time that she would be dead.  She didn't die. Crazy huh? Then during the career lifetime of the Mayo brothers antiseptic measures were proposed that made surgeries much less prone to secondary infections.

Today people routinely go into surgery.  Take my husband for example.  (Or any generic orthopedist if you prefer.) People come to him who have problems that are debilitating, but 100% not life threatening.  Then they ask him to cut into their body dig some things out and sew them back up. My husband puts cement into people's bodies. Cement! (You know the body kind of cement.) In any other scenario but a surgical one a person sustaining that kind of injury would be dead. But not only do we expect these people to not die, we expect them to fully recover and to improve their lives. And this isn't supposed to be remarkable.

I can't imagine being the person who calls the shots in that scenario.  No back up, nobody to hold your hand, nothing.  Of course there are people in there to help and assist. Without those people I'm sure much of modern surgeries wouldn't be possible, but when the chips are down and a decision needs to be made that will effect the rest of someone else's life there has to be one person to make the call.  I am so glad it isn't me.  I could never go to a profession that has that much stress all the time.  Because bodies aren't the same.  And you can make mistakes. And even if you don't make mistakes sometimes people die anyway.  Or don't fully recover or the surgery you thought would be perfect for them didn't help them as much as you would have hoped.

Also, I'm glad that Dan is the kind of person who can handle that stress.  And also that he enjoys helping people.  He really truly does enjoy helping others. And it amazes me the knowledge and skills he has gained in order to help others these past 8 years.  I am blown away by what the medical profession can do.