The hospital ob-gyn department (I think two, maybe three docs), had patients lined up, so within a few hours I had most of the week scheduled, planning just two major surgeries per day. The surgical team included one general surgeon, two orthopedic surgeons, and one oral-facial surgeon, but just one anesthetist (though we quickly arranged for local anesthetists to help). Moreover, we had no experienced OR nurses. That's because CHPAA formed it's own surgical team, rather than subcontracting out to exisiting surgical teams as they have done in past years and will do again next year.
So it seem reasonable to use just the two rooms offered to us (out of three, leaving one OR room for emergencies such as trauma or cesarean deliveries—though with a published CS rate of just 2% the latter is rare and we didn't see any). In Takeo we placed two OR tables in one of our two rooms so that three cases could be going on at the same time. But this time around two simultaneous surgeries maxed out our nursing support. So one room was devoted to the father-son orthopedic team and room to alternate general surgery and gyn.
First patient, a 40 year old GP with several months of pelvic pressure. A little young for uterine prolapse, but years of hard labor in the fields, and poor nutrition will do it. Similar story for the second patient, but she had something to eat while waiting her turn so was rescheduled for the next day.
I was just reading over surgery instructions (Jack is having ear tubes put in and adenoids taken out next week) about the importance of not eating a few hours before surgery. I think the hardest time for us was when Clyde had his pull-through surgery a week shy of being four months old - I followed the instructions about not nursing him, but then his surgery was delayed an additional hour or two. I think everyone in pre-op was thrilled when the grumpy/hungry baby was finally taken back to the OR!
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