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Surgery Quotes

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Surgery Quotes

“I made the mistake of using my earned sick time at the W. M. Keck Observatory for essential surgery. When I returned to work the management team demanded my resignation numerous times, citing my essential surgery as a reason. The W. M. Keck Observatory taught me that using earned sick time in the USA may put your future employment at significant risk.”

“I didn't expect to recover from my second operation but since I did, I consider that I'm living on borrowed time. Every day that dawns is a gift to me and I take it in that way. I accept it gratefully without looking beyond it. I completely forget my physical suffering and all the unpleasantness of my present condition and I think only of the joy of seeing the sun rise once more and of being able to work a little bit, even under difficult conditions.”

“Whenever they are condemning weaves or breast implants, some people speak so passionately that their false teeth almost fall out.”

“As good surgical doctor works on a patient in the theater with varied kinds of surgical instruments, so a true leader also needs a clean bag of leadership characters that vary from task to task. One-way leaders are obvious failures!”

“Before operating on a patient's brain, I realized, I must first understand his mind: his identity, his values, what makes his life worth living, & what devastation makes it reasonable to let that life end. The cost of my dedication to succeed was high, & the ineluctable failures brought me nearly unbearable guilt. Those burdens are what make medicine holy & wholly impossible.”

“Obvious solutions to serious problems often go thousands of years before being stumbled upon. Hand protection on swords, for example, took a remarkably long time to develop; and sanitation in surgery took even longer, and that was with the best and brightest medical practitioners of several eras all cogitating over their tremendous death rates.”

“Excuse me? Who here had the bright idea of healing a gunshot wound with the bullet still in it?” All eyes turned to another doctor that had stepped into the hallway. Toriel narrowed her eyes. “That was my doing. You must be Doctor Akron. Doctor Ross mentioned you might stop by.” “I'll bet. Listen to me. What you did put that girl's life in danger. You left contaminated shrapnel in an open wound and sealed it up without even trying to sterilize it.” “I... I am not familiar with the details of human medical treatment-” “Exactly! You have no business making those kinds of calls! All you did was make things worse! Even with the X-Rays we had to perform exploratory surgery to find all of those bullet fragm-” Hal Greene suddenly pushed past the queen and stood face to face with Dr. Akron. “Hi there doctor! You sound cranky, you could use some fresh air!” Before anyone could respond, Hal grabbed the doctor's shoulder, knelt down, pulled, and twisted in one seamless movement that left the doctor in a fireman's carry across his shoulders. “What in the- PUT ME DOWN THIS INSTANT!” “I can't put you down here, you silly billy! The fresh air is outside the building! Let's go! DAH NAH NAAAAAH DAH NAH NAHHHH....” Every person in the hallway watched in confusion as Hal carried the angry doctor on his shoulders, running down the hallway, into the lobby, and presumably outside the building. “...WAS THAT THE ROCKY THEME HE WAS TRYING TO SING?” Papyrus scratched his skull in confusion. “Yeah.” Justin shrugged. “Hal loves underdog stories.”

“Sometimes I go into the hospital and have to do surgery just as the sleeping pills begin to kick in. I spend the rest of the night pinching myself and throwing cold water on my face. At night I tell myself it’s not worth it. I tell myself I hate the Army and wish I’d never joined. I curse the war on both sides, American and Iraqi. I wish everyone would just...die...so that I could go home.”

“He had brought his bone saw in its leather case. And his white linen smock, the one he used to save his clothes when he had dirty work in store, and would have Li Chang wash and bleach after. An amputation would be the dirtiest work there was. He remembered the smocks the surgeons wore, layer on layer of red, dried blood darker under fresh red splashes, with the occasional white splinter of bone. Joshua prayed as he rode, prayed hard and desperately, prayed that the smock in his bag would be clean and white when he turned homeward.”

“He staggered and might have toppled sideways if Clara had not been there, grabbing his arm and steadying him. He turned toward her and saw her read, and then reflect, the anguish in his face. Her grip on his arm went from support to a more frantic clutch. She said under her breath, “You can get through this.” And after a long, shaky breath: “I’ll get you through it.” But her hand was trembling on his arm.”

“Pilots used to fly planes manually, but now they operate a dashboard with the help of computers. This has made flying safer and improved the industry. Healthcare can benefit from the same type of approach, with physicians practicing medicine with the help of data, dashboards, and AI. This will improve the quality of care they provide and make their jobs easier and more efficient”

“He walked across the room and flicked a switch. A spotlight turned on, illuminating a laminated poster of a woman on his wall. He took a crayon from his pocket and began drawing on it. I could see smudges from past demonstrations. [. . .] His dashed lines crisscrossed the woman's chest as if he were planning a military maneuver on undulating terrain.”

“Into every life some rain must fall and December was one of those months when the downpour was beyond reason. Ursula, my wife of 61 years, had the same problem that I had about five years ago. Namely she had inflamed intestines brought on by a gallbladder operation which caused an intestinal blockage brought on in part by having had a total of 9 intestinal operations over the years. This time it necessitated having the numerous adhesions and quite some internal scar tissue removed. It also required the surgeon to remove a part of her small intestines (with me it was two feet) before being able to glue the two severed parts together again.”

“His chief delights were of a less public and philanthropic kind, requiring many explanations of sounds which seemed peculiar even amidst that babel of the damned. Among these sounds were frequent revolver-shots—surely not uncommon on a battlefield, but distinctly uncommon in an hospital. Dr. West’s reanimated specimens were not meant for long existence or a large audience.”

“How much more will that cost on top of the surgery?" Did it matter? She had just spent nearly four thousand dollars getting that salivary gland surgically removed. Was she going to allow her dog to die of an infection because it would cost an extra two hundred? Bryson took a mental step back. Who in the hell was he to pass judgment? Maybe she didn't have an extra two hundred dollars. Maybe she had scraped together every cent she had for the surgery. He knew better than most what it was like to have to make tough financial choices. He'd spent the better part of his life doing it. He took Mrs. Stewart's hand in his. "I know it's hard not to stress about the cost, but please don't. The receptionist can tell you about programs that will allow you to pay in installments so that you don't have to cover everything all at once." The worry marring her features lessened. "Thank you again for all you did for my little Jack." She gave his hand a gentle squeeze before slipping past him and walking over to the reception area.”

“A large piece of lead floated out of Bobby head, followed by dark chunks of what could only be pieces of Bobby's brain. The torrent started up again. It flowed steady rather than pulsed with his heart. I knew from that, and from the amount of blood, that it was that mofo vein bleeding. And probably more than a small tear if the amount of blood was telling. I thought there had to be a hole the size of Montana in that thing. "Jesus Mother Mary" I said, then "Stitch!" The scrub tech slapped a needle holder into my palm, a curved needle and silk stitch clamped into the end of it. I might have closed my eyes—I've been told I do that sometimes in surgery when I'm trying to visualize something—though if so I don't remember doing it. I took that needle and aimed it into the pool of blood. "Suck here Joe, right here." When I thought I could see something, something gray and not black red, I plunged the pointy end of the needle through whatever the visible tissue was and looped it out again. I cinched it down and tied it quick, then repeated the maneuver again after adjusting slightly for lighting, sweating, my own bounding heartbeat, and the regret I wasn't wearing my own diaper. We're losing, I thought.”

“After tomorrow, I'll see a different face staring back at me from the mirror - at first, a swollen face, but then one with a smaller jaw and a straighter smile. This is what I've wanted for years, but standing on the edge of all this change, I feel like I want to pause time and remember exactly what if feels like to be here now - in the before.”

“In the course of an extended investigation into the nature of inflammation, and the healthy and morbid conditions of the blood in relation to it, I arrived several years ago at the conclusion that the essential cause of suppuration in wounds is decomposition brought about by the influence of the atmosphere upon blood or serum retained within them, and, in the case of contused wounds, upon portions of tissue destroyed by the violence of the injury. To prevent the occurrence of suppuration with all its attendant risks was an object manifestly desirable, but till lately apparently unattainable, since it seemed hopeless to attempt to exclude the oxygen which was universally regarded as the agent by which putrefaction was effected. But when it had been shown by the researches of Pasteur that the septic properties of the atmosphere depended not on the oxygen, or any gaseous constituent, but on minute organisms suspended in it, which owed their energy to their vitality, it occurred to me that decomposition in the injured part might be avoided without excluding the air, by applying as a dressing some material capable of destroying the life of the floating particles.”

“No matter who you were in sixteenth-century Europe, you could be sure of two things: you would be lucky to reach fifty years of age, and you could expect a life of discomfort and pain. Old age tires the body by thirty-five, Erasmus lamented, but half the population did not live beyond the age of twenty. There were doctors and there was medicine, but there does not seem to have been a great deal of healing. Anyone who could afford to seek a doctor's aid did so eagerly, but the doctor was as likely to maim or kill as to cure. His potions were usually noxious and sometimes fatal—but they could not have been as terrible and traumatic as the contemporary surgical methods. The surgeon and the Inquisitor differed only in their motivation: otherwise, their batteries of knives, saws, and tongs for slicing, piercing, burning, and amputating were barely distinguishable. Without any anesthetic other than strong liquor, an operation was as bad as the torments of hell.”