All That Moves Us by Jay Wellons

Author:Jay Wellons [Wellons, Jay]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2022-06-28T00:00:00+00:00

14

Bucket Lines

All surgeons have mentors. And sometimes, when you find yourself in a tight spot, it is the wise words of your mentor that come to mind most clearly and save you.

One of my most notable mentors during residency training at Duke was a freshly minted pediatric neurosurgeon named Tim George. At the time, Tim had recently completed his own training, and Duke was his first faculty position. It was quickly clear to all of the residents that he was a talented surgeon and excellent communicator. He elevated everyone around him. His patients certainly loved him, as did his OR staff. In particular, the healthcare workers who transported patients, sterilized the equipment, and entered in the medical orders on the wards felt a great sense of commonality with him. Tim was a proud Black man who had grown up in the Bronx (as he was quick to remind folks), and he loved the stark contrasts between his hometown and his new town in North Carolina. He also loved to contrast his upbringing in New York and mine in Mississippi (often mimicking me with a Foghorn Leghorn accent spoken during lulls in cases that nearly paralyzed us with laughter. I say, I say, a-hand me that there a-hemostat. I’m just a simple country neurosurgeon, tryin’ to get the day’s work done).

Tim brought a sense of calm and ease into the OR with him every morning that suffused the room. Given the energy in his OR and the high-intensity-stress wavelengths in the other ORs for the day, it was an easy decision for me on which room I wanted to be in. Operating on children was and is challenging; not only is the anatomy smaller and changing as a child grows, but the stress of the parents and caregivers around each case is as palpable as it is completely understandable. Somehow the OR environment that Tim created mitigated that stress just enough. During those training years as a fledgling neurosurgeon, you end up spending more time with stress than you ever thought possible, so any way to manage it is welcome.

In a single hour of being on call as a neurosurgical resident, you can sit with an elderly woman in the emergency department to tell her that the brain hemorrhage her husband of fifty years just suffered while shaving is not survivable and no surgery will change that. Then, just afterward, you can be called to the pediatric ICU to place a lifesaving drain in the brain of a four-year-old girl dying from elevated intracranial pressure and watch as the child opens her eyes a few minutes later, squeezing her parents’ hands. One hour. In the span of one single hour, those things can happen. Over and over and over in the weeks, then months, then seven years of formal training. That job training, at least the part that deals in the intense and important human truths forged at the unspoken places we navigate, is never-ending.

Ultimately, one has no choice but to learn to live with stress.

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