Scrubbing for Two
Happy New Year to all my scrub tech pals out there in the blogosphere! My apologies for the long absence in posts. It’s been kind of insane since my last entry. I’ve got a lot of catching up to do.
The big news in SutureSelf Land is that I’m pregnant. The calendar says I’m 8 months along, but my body says I’ve been pregnant for about 15 years. When I found out, I consulted Dr. Google for information he might have about scrubbing while impregnated. As you can guess, Google came up with the same amount of info that it gives you if you look for anything surg tech related (i.e. NOTHING). So I did what any good surgical tech does when faced with something they know nothing about: learned on the job. Today, I’m here to share what I’ve learned on my adventure while scrubbing for two. There’s a lot, so this might take more than one post. Sorry, male scrub friends. At the very least you can read this and be thankful it’s not you!
You’re about to be the break person a lot more often When it comes to hazardous stuff, the OR is dark and full of terrors. We all know that preggos shouldn’t be exposed to bone cement and limit x-ray exposure, but there are SO MANY MORE THINGS. Do you work with chemo drugs? Not anymore. You also won’t be frying off anymore anal condylomas. (Okay, so no one’s super upset over losing those rooms). Lasering HPV from anywhere is no longer part of your repertoire either. And as if that’s not enough, management will kick you out of a room at the slightest mention of contact precautions, hepatitis, or HIV. Your charge nurse doesn’t want to be responsible for your baby coming out looking like something out of a Kronenberg movie.
What does this mean for you? It means, you’re potentially going to spend a lot more time NOT scrubbing. You’re going to be giving breaks or working on “special projects” that magically fell from the sky the moment you told your manager you were knocked up. Speaking of telling your manager, coworkers, and the rest of the universe…
You might be telling everyone a little sooner than you expected I went into work thinking, “I’ll just tell my boss and he can manage my assignments until I’m safely through first trimester.” HA! Good luck with that! Scrub techs aren’t stupid. When you suddenly stop scrubbing certain cases, they’re going to notice and call you out on it. The day it all went sideways for me, I was assigned to precept a tech in a laser laryngoscopy. I suspected the patient had HPV and I told my manager as much, but since it wasn’t specified he wouldn’t change my assignment. I asked the surgeon and she confirmed my suspicion, but by that point there was no excuse I could come up with to sneakily extricate myself from the case. I had to tell my circulator and the scrub I was teaching why I was going to have to make a hasty exit before they started lasering. As expected, the entire OR knew about my “condition” before closing ranks for the case were even up.
Everything is too heavy for you I am not a delicate flower. I have legs that could crush walnuts and grip strength that frankly, scares my power-lifting husband. And yet! I magically became this dainty, fragile being, incapable of lifting a finger the second my secret was out. I was chastised for picking up instrument trays, shooed away from pushing my case carts down the hall, and GOD FORBID you try to lift a patient! One of my nurses nearly had an aneurysm when I dared to help pick up a patient’s feet to help move them. (Did I mention the patient was under 100 pounds?) My new mantra became, “I’m pregnant, not dead.” I said this to coworkers approximately 500 times per day. It must have had some effect because eventually, they let me do some things-like holding a hand during carpal tunnel surgeries. (Does the excitement ever end??)
All of this fun and I wasn’t even through my first trimester! Stay tuned for more adventures in Scrubbing for Two!
