Secretaries to Surgeons

I keep thinking of them, the moments when time seems to stand still… Breathing tubes that won’t go down the airway, as the airway grows tighter and tighter. Blood that will not clot but only bleed, bleed, bleed. 

I have begun to look at the faces of the anesthesiologist, the surgeon, or the nurses in these moments and a deep admiration has settled inside of me. It’s as if the most stressful moments break through the fog of the mundane and remind me why we need people skilled in saving lives. 

One day when one of our best anesthesiologists was struggling to put a breathing tube down, I saw his face was resolute. He was calm but intense, his actions rapid and purposeful but not chaotic. His words were mostly quiet with an occasional muttered word of frustration. 

There’s something about a situation so complicated that even the expert struggles, that touched me. I knew if I were that patient I would want to be in those hands. 

And the tube went down. 

On another day, the patient’s blood would not clot and empty plastic wrappings and pink sheets from the blood bank were everywhere, and still the blood wouldn’t clot. And yet, in all the phone calls I made or departments I walked to for more blood, more platelets, more clotting factors, I met not one person who spoke rudely about the pressure put on them or the way their night was ruined. And I knew if I was that patient whose blood wouldn’t clot, I would want to be right here, at this hospital, where everyone in the building was willing to drop their normal routine and do their little piece to save my life. 

The ambulance arrived quickly and when I thanked them for coming so fast, they said, “We came lights and sirens.” So I know there were commuters in a hurry to go somewhere who had pulled off to the side of the road and out of the way for the ambulance to get through. 

And so many other pieces to the puzzle, big or small. Cab drivers called in the middle of the night, lab techs standing waiting at the door,  the pharmacy tech putting up with my insistence to wait in person until the syringe was ready. The surgeon who wasn’t on call but stayed anyway and missed a family event. The other surgeon who wasn’t on call but stayed for a few hours to help anyway even after another very long operation. The secretary who arranged paperwork and stickers. The person who stayed past their time to go home. The nurse from another unit who came to help. People who bought food for everyone. The medical records person who got me a document in record time.  The receptionist who stayed calm and steady surrounded by stressed families, and was patient when I had to hang up on her twice. The physician’s assistant who came when she wasn’t on call and the one who worked for nearly a 24-hour day straight. The scheduler who expedited the message.  (This is another story but I can’t help but mention them too: My friends who prayed for me when I text them somewhere in the middle of everything, asking for prayer, followed by a deep peace that flooded me.)

And don’t forget: all that blood was donated by someone like you. 

It’s hard to overestimate how much each role matters, however great or small. If just one person, at any level, dawdles or whines, everything else can suffer. 

I am one of the few people who kind of doesn’t do much in the way of hands on work myself (well I did walk 25,000 steps that day… Does that count?)

But as the coordinator taking phone calls,  and running through the hospital from the basement to the sixth floor, I got the shock and blessing of realizing at the end of the day I had just witnessed a disaster that wasn’t. I had ruined a bunch of people’s schedules and never got yelled at. I had watched people work 18 hours straight with scarcely a sip of water, without breaking stride. I had watched doctors and departments mesh. And that one dawdling, whining person who slows everything down never surfaced on that day. 

And the blood began to clot. 

There’s so much negative talk about the medical field these days, and perhaps some of it is justified.

But today I only want to say how proud I am of the people I work with, from secretaries to surgeons.