Paging Dr. Barker

I've had a chance to see another heart surgery- ok one and a half heart surgeries. I have become friends with the profusionists (who control the heart/lung machines) and was invited back to see another sugery. I'm a veteran now and even have my own scrubs. Most of the people know me by name up in the CVOR so I can go up there pretty much whenever I want to now (with permission from Victor- the head RN of course).
The first (partial) surgery I got to see was a woman who was in for her 3rd open heart surgery and had also had radiation and a double massectomy for breast cancer. She was a TINY woman and pushing 80 and such a trooper! So the surgeon started doing his thing and when he was cutting the sternum he all of a sudden started yelling "oh my god! oh dear lord, shit!"- not something a surgeon should be saying! Within a few minutes there was probably 20 people in the room and blood was POURING out of this poor woman's chest. I was huddled in the corner, trying not to get in the way, hoping I wasn't watching this woman die. Then Victor came in and told me this wasn't the best case for me to watch- uhh, ya think!? So i left and watched from outside for a bit.
Don't worry- the woman lived and is recovering nicely. Turns out- she had so much scar tissue from the surgeries and radiation that her heart and surrounding tissue was fused to the chest wall (whereas there is normally an inch or 2 space between) and when he was cutting the sternum he nicked the aorta. The tricky part is in order to repair it- they needed to open the chest up- which required cutting away the heart and all the tissue from the chest wall- which takes quite a bit of time. If they just try to open it like they normally would- they would be literally ripping her heart apart with it. Needless to say, it was a very tense situation- but everything turned out good!! (thank goodness!!)
So I went up later that day and saw another open heart- a much calmer surgery. Steve the profusionist (AKA hot doctor)who I've become pretty good friends with was working this case so we was able to show me everything he does and also explain the surgery and what the surgeon was doing throughout the whole thing. It was pretty cool and I was so glad he was there!
Steve also does surgeries at the children's hospital in Portland. He had a case yesterday where a 7 day old baby was born without one of the valves in his heart- So this tiny little 6 lb baby had open heart surgery to save his life. Steve said it would be easy to take me over there to see one of those surgeries- which would be soo cool. I don't know how I would handle seeing a tiny little baby with his chest split open though. I'll have to think about that one...