Fragile

A few days ago, I was able to scrub in on a surgery with my Career Mentor, a Pediatric Surgeon. She had texted me the day before saying she had a bile duct reconstruction of a newborn the next morning and asked if I wanted to scrub.



Of course I said yes.



So after (finally) learning to scrub in the proper way (to ensure a sterile environment) I walked in the operating room...a.k.a. Sauna-the room had to be kept very very warm to keep the baby warm. But once I glanced at the table, my heart absolutely broke. On the operating table, lay a tiny, helpless, fragile, 10-day old little baby girl. I thought, Wow, I can't believe she has to be cut open.



Dr. S came in and explained the procedure, basically the baby had a cyst about the size of a baseball lodged between her liver, gall blader, kidney, and stomach. Earlier I had mentioned Dr. S said it would be a reconstruction, well we ended up completely taking the gall bladder (as well as, of course, the cyst) out and then had to reconstruct a lot of different (technical) things to ensure that her insides would work! At one point in the surgery, spilled out from the huge incision on her stomach were all of her intestines...which, for a baby are not terribly huge, but still big. Basically at that point, all of her insides were, outsides (bad joke, sorry). As I was helping, I thought about my friend M's new baby, and how I had held her the day before. I was overwhelmed with a sense of thankfulness, in seeing the huge contrast between these two babies, one incredibly sick and the other perfectly healthy. Thanks, God, for making us healthy. I just pray he'll help me figure out if I want to be the one fixing the incredibly sick.