In Search For A Miracle

A few nights ago, I had dinner with my boyfriend's roommates in the University. The conversation was light and I enjoyed those few hours with them. This was a table of student engineers and most of them are Christians. They know that I am an MD and one of them, Rob, asked if in my many duty hours, I witnessed a miracle. At that time, I boxed a miracle as a patient coming in DOA and us helping him back to life. Because that, I have never seen. Which is why my answer was a quick, "No."

The next night, it was my turn to go out with my college friends, whom I haven't seen in a while. One of them asked me the different surgeries I've assisted in and I recalled one that I don't think I will forget in a long time.

I was in the General Surgery Service of the hospital I am rotating in. Instead of calling the pre-duty interns, they asked me to scrub in because the surgery might extend after 5 pm as it a staged surgery. Honestly, I cannot remember the name of the patient nor her exact age, all I know is that the patient is a mid-50s/female who came in due to increasing abdominal girth and jaundice. Work-ups were done and they found out that she had liver and kidney cysts. She was put on dialysis and the surgery will unroof the liver cysts and remove one of her cystic kidneys. It is called a staged surgery because one service -- the General Surgery team, where I belong, will open her and unroof the liver cysts and the Urology team with their own intern will do the nephrectomy, after that, we (the GS team) will go back in and close the patient.

I cannot go into the detailed events of what transpired in that OR because of confidentiality reasons. But I will write the details that I can. Our official time out was 2pm. What was supposed to be a 4-5hour surgery stretched to 9. Our patient's BP started falling by the 6th hour. We had to transfuse 13 bags of blood. I can't remember if they were packed RBCs or whole blood. We also transfused platelet concentrate and voluven but the patient's BP was still falling. Our surgeons seriously considered doing damage control. Once or twice I heard that there was the possibility of a table death, which we are all avoiding because a table death is never a good thing. One of the surgeons said that it'll be a miracle if we can get her into the recovery room, more so in the ICU.

By the 8th hour, her BP started stabilizing. We quickly closed her, using staples instead of sutures should there be a need to open her up again.

By the 9th hour we unscrubed and I literally fell down on a chair from exhaustion and hunger. My phone started beeping because I forgot to tell my boyfriend that I will scrub in a 9-hour long surgery. Because in the first place, it wasn't supposed to be a 9-hour long surgery.

I climbed up to the wards for my prerounds for the census after a quick nap as it was already well past midnight. I woke up at around 3 or 4 in the morning for my prerounds with the resident. I told her I will just check on the patient in recovery.

"Huh? Sino? Wala na tayong patient sa RR." She said.

"Doc yung OR ni [General Surgeon] kanina." I answered. "Oh no, she went into the light?"

"Yung unroofing? Hindi, naikayat na sa ICU kanina lang." She said as-a-matter-of-factly.

"No! Seriously?"

"Oo nga. Balita ko nga ang daming nangyari sa OR na yun."

Then for the next three wards that we pre-rounded, I told her the details of the surgery. Yes. Three wards. Because it took that long to relay all the events of the surgery.

"Ang swerte niya ano?" She said.

"And lakas ng mga nagdadasal para sa kanya." I said sleepily.

My rotation in that service ended the next day and I didn't know if the patient made it to full recovery but for us, adding just a few more days to another's life to be with the people they love is miracle enough.

So there. Recalling my many duty days I realise that my answer to Rob's question shouldn't have been a flat "no" but a resounding "yes". As I look back, there are more patients that I have seen at the worst condition one night and walking up and about on the next. But they deserve their own entry, their own story. This is just one of the many.