O.R.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to my first exposure in the operating room! Brace yourselves as you are about to witness the bloopers of a first-timer OR student nurse!

8:30 PM, The day before my exposure. I couldn't eat. I felt nervous. My palms were sweating with the thought of seeing the insides of a human being the next day. Gross.

9:41 PM. I watched some procedures in YouTube -- ExLap, Bone Traction, Apendectomy, etc. and one thing's for sure, they are all messy and gory.

12:01 AM, The fated day. My eyes were closed but my mind wouldn't left me to peace. I couldn't sleep. I had fears. What if I wouldn't be able to identify the right surgical instruments the surgeon will be asking for? What if I would mistakenly handle to him the Kelly instead of the Mayo? I heard rumors about mean doctors throwing the wrong instruments to the nurse who handed those things to them. Ouch!

2:00 AM. I was banging my head on the pillow. "Sleep, why has deserted me?"

3:00 AM. My consciousness finally drifted to oblivion. ZZZZZZZZZZ...

3:38.65 AM. I dreamed of eating a human brain topped with pineapple slices, mayonnaise and ketchup. In the dream, I was Hannibal Lecter's long lost son. Growl!!!

4:30 AM. The built-in circadian clock in my brain alarmed. Can I change the alarm tone the next time around? Huh!

4:42 AM. I took a bath but the nervousness was not washed away. It grew!

5:10 AM. Breakfast. I ate rice, hotdogs, and fried eggs. I also had a cup of coffee. No human brain, intestines, or liver in sight. Thank goodness.

6:oo AM. I was waiting for the jeepney. Two malnourished dogs were copulating at my side. A hillarious diversion!

7:05 AM. I arrived at Western Visayas Medical Center. My heart was pounding too loudly that I never heard the greetings of my colleagues. The drum in my chest sounded like the beat of war dance.

8:00 AM. The torture of waiting. Our clinical instuctor was alrady one hour late.

8:15 AM. Our clinical instructor arrived. There's someting about his smile, it kinda looked sinister.

8:17 AM. We entered the operating room. Welcome to the chamber of gore and messiness.

8:30 AM. "Mr. Macarse, you scrub now." That was my first cue. My God, I almost forgot the proper way of scrubbing. "Wait, is this the right glove or the left?" My neurons are disintegrating! My brain was trying to retrieve all of the principles of asepsis. System overload...

8:45 AM. Major operation. Exploratory Laparotomy. I was the instrument nurse.

Surgeon: "First knife..... second knife....." (Shit, my hands were shaking!)

Surgeon: "Kelly forceps...." Me: "Come again doc?" Clinical Instructor: "Hand it correctly mister or I will spank your hand!" (Pak! And he did.)

Slash... slash.... swish.... swish.... So that was how our insides looked like. Hmmm... Thank goodness I didn't faint but nobody knows that my legs were shaking underneath! Ha ha ha...

Me (Thinking): So this is how surgery looks like, exposing your insides to a bunch of people you don't actually know..... Letting a person who calls himself as the surgeon excavate your cavities while he hums to the tune of Lady Gaga's Poker Face..... And I don't even know why he hums that tune when the music playing on the background is The Verve's Freshmen.

10:15 A.M. Surgeon: "Lets close this and lets go grab some coffee and buns."

Me: "Hallelujah!" I was exhausted that after I took off my gloves, gown, and other protective apparels, I absent-mindedly took a seat at a nearby stretcher.

Clinical Instructor: "What are you doing mister? Get off your butt and scrub! You will going to assist in OR 4!"

Me: "Right away sir!"

Clinical Instructor: "And please, stop shaking like a vibrator!"

Me (Thinking): Grrrrrrrrrrr.....