the underwear drawer

five really satisfying things in anesthesia


1.) Putting gigantic IVs in people with huge veins.

2.) That pop as you shove the central line dilator through the platysmus.

3.) Timing your wake-up just right so that you're extubating an awake, calm, pain-free patient right as the case is finishing up.  Then watching the surgeons startle and do a double-take when the drapes come down and the patient asks, "So, how did it go?"

4.) When you're doing an epidural, that crunchy feeling of passing through the ligamentum flavum right before you get a nice, crisp loss of resistance.  

5.) When people actually call me "Michelle" instead of "Anesthesia."  (For example, "Anesthesia has the chart."  "Anesthesia, hold ventilations."  "We need an 18 gauge angiocath.  See if we can get one from Anesthesia.")

I am a simple woman with simple pleasures.