Operatiekamer

Operatiekamer a.k.a OK is a-OK!

Here in my hospital, instead of calling our Operation Theater as 'OT', we called it 'OK' (pronounced Oh-Car), in which stands for Operatiekamerin Dutch. Why Dutch? Ntah la labu… maybe because Indonesia was once colonized by the Dutch and that they adapted few of their terms.Today, I went into the OK for a laparotomy procedure and a tubectomy. I didn't even assist the operation, my being there was just for study and observing purpose, but I had to stand there for more than a 5-dready hours!

So there I stood, and walked around the operation table finding a perfect spot to view the procedure. Those were indeed my first laparotomy and tubectomy procedure (previously were caesarean sections and hysterectomy.

At first, the laparotomy was cool. They actually took out the whole guts to get to the ovary where the cancer cells are. The un-cool part was that the cancer cells had metastasis to everywhere that they took about 3-4 hours to explore the abdomen cavity to clear up every bit of the cancerous cells. It then turned to bore me as I had to stand long to watch them doing the exploration.The extra 1-2 hours was held to the surgery department surgeons to fix the patient's perforated peritoneum. And still, I had to stand there to watch the procedure. It was kinda cool though, but I was too tired standing up.

It was actually nothing much different than those procedures I watched on TV. They could actually make videos out of those procedures and let us just watch them while having popcorns and laze on couch, instead of us having to stand long hours in the freezing OK. Besides, it was bothersome that I had to change into the OK sterilized outfit (which is not sexy!) and put on the cap and mask at all time!

Haritu 5 jam, harini 5 jam. Baru 5 jam, kesian kaki I… can I become a surgeon??