Don't tell the kids, but there is no tooth fairy
I've decided, for my personal sanity, that the medical industry needs a policy limiting the number of surgical instruments in existence at any given time. For example, the most common pan, a General Major, has 40+ instruments in it. That's one pan! Wanna know how many different instruments exist total in the surgical world? Well frankly I have no clue, but “an unholy gargantuan butt-load" seems like a fairly accurate number. Techs are expected to recognize all (okay-most) instruments so we can snag them at a moment's notice for surgeons. Easy right? Well perhaps I should also mention the super-secret bonus fact that surgeons like to make up new *creative* names for things. That being said, I felt confident that I knew my instruments on the day I walked into a total knee replacement with a new surgeon. Sadly, I was mistaken.
Nobody knew who Dr. Cheerful was when room assignments were posted that day. I asked around hoping to mine some nugget of wisdom about his "preferences" (aka: bizarre quirks) so I could prepare in advance. No one had a clue. I did a simple knee setup and figured I'd just wing it from there.
Dr. Cheerful arrived and was totally fabulous. He was funny, chatty, and liked to teach. We were knee-deep (tee-hee) into the operation and things were going great until...he asked me for a “tooth fairy”. I had no freaking clue what a "tooth fairy" was. I assumed it was his made-up name for a common instrument. Attempting to save face, I looked at was he was doing and grabbed what I thought would make sense for the task. Confidently, I smiled and handed him a clamp. He looked at me like I had just sprouted horns. "No, I need a tooth fairy," he said, patiently. At this point, the room had come to a grinding halt. The only sound was the beeping of the anesthesia machine keeping time with Led Zepplin playing on XM radio. I looked back at my pans, concentrating as hard as I could-like if I just stared hard enough the toothfairy would magically leap out of the pan into my hand. Empty-handed, I turned back to the operative field. I locked eyes with Dr. Cheerful and we stood there…awkwardly staring at each other. From inside his Stryker hood, he silently mouthed a word: tooth fairy, to which I cocked my head in confusion like a dopey cocker spaniel. After what felt like FOREVER, someone in the room leaned over and whispered in my ear, "He wants a pituitary. A rongeur?"
A PITUITARY!? I snapped out of my trance and whipped around to grab a pituitary rongeur. Incidentally, it was sitting right on top in plain sight. I slapped the rongeur into Dr. Cheerful's waiting hand and the room instantly sprang back to life. We finished the procedure without further incident and the surgeon departed with a wave and a smile. As I tore down my tables, I asked, "Does he always call the pituitary a tooth fairy?" The question was met with laughter as someone told me he had never called it that. Apparently, his pronunciation of “pituitary” had simply distorted over the noise of the fans inside our Stryker hoods and (like a bad game of Telephone) "tooth fairy" was the result. So, so embarrassing.
I haven't seen Dr. Cheerful since that day so I was unable to explain why I suddenly turned into a gaping idiot during his case. Since that day, no one has asked me for a “tooth fairy,” but I figure the nickname will catch on sooner or later. When that day comes, I’ll be ready-pituitary in hand.
