phew. just stood for 5 hrs in the operation theatre holding my forearms up above my elbows. i went through the whole process of scrubbing and making myself as sterile as possible. and man, it just makes you feel so conscious of everything you touch. once you scrub up, you aren't allowed to put your arms down coz there is a chance of your lower half apron touching the wall or 'unsterilised' surfaces and thus contaminating it. and man, it's tiring. after that, i just felt like hanging my arms loose on both sides.
the whole scrubbing procedure was pretty fun. you stand infront of the sink and wonder, where's the tap? guess what? it's on the floor! you step on it and water flows out. magic. but i wonder whether i'll be able to do the whole thing again without a nurse guiding me. it involves a lot of conscious acts like keeping your hands and forearms above your elbows while running it through water and being careful not to touch or brush against anything else after that.
oh man i hope no consultants or doctors are reading this. they'll be laughing at this ulu, dumb dumb twit student blogging about her 1st scrubbing up.
anyway, i felt a bit more significant as a medical student at last. since i scrubbed up i was able to stand right next to the operation table and i actually helped to cut up sutures and hold some instruments in place! alright alright it's nothing much. but still, it's a change rather than standing there just observing and trying to make yourself as thin as possible so that you won't be in the way of ever-so-important consultants doing their job.
and yeap...watching surgeons in action just made me in awe of them. especially my supervisor for this block. i have the utmost respect for him (and i pray everyday he doesn't bombard me with questions). he just commands this really calm aura around him. and he must be one of the most polite surgeons around (or are all of the scottish surgeons this way as well?). he says thanks and please to his assistant every 2 minutes during his operations. it humbles you to stand beside consultants like that. urgh...wonder if there will actually come a day when i am a consultant as good as him. ah...better pass my 4th yr finals 1st.
finally had our house warming last Sunday. it was great! 35 of us altogether but there was so much food left that all 9 of us didn't need to cook for lunch/dinner on Mon. n the food was really good. had sheperd's pie, claypot rice (used rice cooker), laksa, carbonara spaghetti, roast lemon chicken, salad. and we prepared them all by ourselves.
everyone was pretty impressed at our culinary skills. and i was quite amazed at our own hidden talents as well (heh allow me a bit of self praise here). but it was a tedious job. from buying the ingredients on sat morn, making the pie on sat night, n spending most of sunday all in the kitchen cooking together. but it was great fun. n the party was a success. got ex-IMU seniors and the chinese christian fellowship ppl over. played 2 rounds of Mafia Murderer Game after that which ended with everyone in stitches.
right. i really should be doing research for my project now.
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