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    Beyond the Red Line: Funny Shit that Happens in the Operating Room
    Beyond the Red Line: Funny Shit that Happens in the Operating Room
    Beyond the Red Line: Funny Shit that Happens in the Operating Room
    Ebook131 pages1 hour

    Beyond the Red Line: Funny Shit that Happens in the Operating Room

    By Deanne Cricks

    ()

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    About this ebook

    We can all agree that the operating room is a very serious place to be for patients. Sometimes funny things happen to staff and with patients that make us smile and sometimes laugh hysterically. This is a compilation of some of those moments.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherNewman Springs Publishing, Inc.
    Release dateJul 1, 2024
    ISBN9798893081091
    Beyond the Red Line: Funny Shit that Happens in the Operating Room

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      Book preview

      Beyond the Red Line - Deanne Cricks

      Table of Contents

      Title

      Copyright

      Loogies

      Extubation Loogie

      Ur-In Trouble

      Golden Shower

      Shit Happens

      Mount Vesuvius

      You Can't Make This Shit Up!

      Seven Cups of Blood

      Karma

      Knocked the Fuck Out

      Glossary of Terms

      About the Author

      cover.jpg

      Beyond the Red Line

      Funny Shit that Happens in the Operating Room

      Deanne Cricks

      Copyright © 2024 Deanne Cricks

      All rights reserved

      First Edition

      NEWMAN SPRINGS PUBLISHING

      320 Broad Street

      Red Bank, NJ 07701

      First originally published by Newman Springs Publishing 2024

      ISBN 979-8-89308-108-4 (Paperback)

      ISBN 979-8-89308-109-1 (Digital)

      Printed in the United States of America

      To everyone who helped me gather these stories and donated stories of their own

      About me, I have been a certified surgical technologist (CST) for thirteen years, and I have seen, heard, and experienced some pretty awesome, funny, and heartbreaking times in the operating room and the emergency room. I will only be sharing the funny and bizarre stories in this book, as this is meant for entertainment, not heartbreak. I've also inserted some very often heard and used phrases, again just because they elicit a giggle (from me, because I'm basically a fourteen-year-old trapped in a fifty-two-year-old body).

      As I began this journey to share some awesomely funny stories, as well as some other bizarre crap, I was not prepared to read the funniest stories I have ever heard.

      If you do not know what the red line is, then this book might not be for you, but read it anyway; you will get a few laughs.

      FYI, the red line is a literal red line painted on the floor to mark the entry point to the OR, where only patients and OR staff are to go beyond. You are required to wear the appropriate scrubs, shoe covers, and head covers to pass beyond this point.

      If you do not work in the medical field, have no fear. There is a glossary of terms in the back of the book. I suggest reading that part first.

      If you need to pee, do it now. On second thought, take the book with you; you may need reading material.

      Welcome to the operating room! I have compiled stories from many different people who all work or have worked in the operating room, and these are the stories from those people, all of whom have agreed to share them without acknowledgment.

      When something happened in our OR, we had one surgeon who would say, "You can't make this shit up." He was not wrong.

      Disclaimer: No HIPAA violations were made in the making of this book. All names and exact locations were left out to protect patient privacy. Remember, any of these stories can happen to anyone.

      Disclaimer: All submissions are as close to the original format as I could tolerate, without having an OCD aneurysm. I apologize for any grammar, punctuation, language, and emojis. I did fix some of the major grammar and punctuation issues. Some stories could be embellished or made up; there is no way to fact-check, so remember these stories are for entertainment purposes only, and enjoy.

      Chapter 1

      Loogies

      Extubation Loogie

      As a wee tech at my first job out of school, I was standing next to a patient talking to the CRNA (anesthesia). I had pulled my mask down since we were done. I was in midsentence when he extubated the patient. The patient coughed, and a big loogie flew into my mouth. I ran to the scrub sink, spat, barfed in the trash can, and ran to the locker room to brush my teeth. When I was done, I went back to the room. They were all still in there and the CRNA was still laughing.

      Trach Loogie

      My friend and I are walking by an OR. We see the nurse by the door, yelling at us to come in. (She was a bitch.) So we come in to see that the patient is not asleep. He has a trach, and he starts coughing. So this nurse leaves us to stand next to this patient while she stands by the door, waiting on anesthesia. The patient practically sits up, coughs up a huge trach loogie! It's flying in the air… My friend and I see it spinning, and it lands on the nurse's eye! She then yells, My eye! And runs off Karma!

      I Swallowed It

      Had an HIV positive patient in the recovery room. He sits up in bed suddenly and coughs up a mucus plug that flew out and into the open mouth of the anesthesia tech. She swallowed it in her surprise and gags while saying I swallowed it. The two other nurses standing there both threw up.

      Chapter 2

      Ur-In Trouble

      Golden Shower

      We were getting ready to do an artificial sphincter case, and the patient had received his spinal anesthesia. The patient was positioned in the stirrups, and the circulator was squatted down at the foot of the bed, wrangling the SCD hoses out of the way, when all of a sudden, the patient coughed. Remember why he was there? Yep, golden shower! We all about died when circulator said, It's in my ear!

      I just remember the surgeon standing in the corner of the room, giggling and saying, No problem, when the nurse said she had to go change her scrubs.

      The best part of this was she was originally supposed to scrub the case and had asked me if I would switch with her, as urology was my service (we are both nurses). Hysterical!

      Not a Hernia

      Speaking of fluid shooting across the room, we were doing what the surgeon thought was an inguinal hernia repair. As he made the incision, fluid shot across the entire room and hit the nurse—it was actually a hydrocele. Oops!

      My Mascara!

      Sometimes in the operating room the surgical tech can feel ignored or not respected. This day was one of those days.

      I was setting up for an ORIF of a tibia and fibula. It was decided we would repair both because of the size of the patient and how much weight the bones would need to bear, so I stayed scrubbed in, waiting for the rep pans that I needed to finish setting up, as the nurses were setting up the bed and the rest of the room. There were three male nurses, each changing the bed as they walked into the room, never consulting each other. I just watched as each one came in, changed it, and left; then the next would come in, change it, and leave; and then the third changed it yet again. I just giggled as the bed was changed four times before the patient was rolled into the room.

      The patient, a male in excess of five hundred pounds, had been in a very serious vehicle accident and was already intubated.

      To set the scene: there were four nurses, two surgeons, a PA, an FA, and two anesthesia personnel in the room, in addition to me and the rep. The three nurses, all guys, all of whom do not listen to any woman 99 percent of the time. The FA, also a guy who doesn't listen to women, unless he's flirting with them. The PA, a nice guy but pretty quiet. The only other female in the room was a nurse who is probably 5'1" tall and probably weighs 130 pounds on a heavy day. Still to this day, I am not sure why she was even there. Nice lady, just not a lot of help with a five-hundred-pounder, since his shin was bigger than her.

      Everyone was bustling around the room trying to figure out how they were going to transfer this guy over to the fracture table. I piped up and said, Why don't we use the hover mat? After all, isn't this exactly the reason why we have it? One of the male nurses holds his hand up to me as if to stop me from talking—a pet peeve of mine! I promise you when I tell you, I am not quiet, so I know he is not the only one that heard me. They heard me and chose not to acknowledge. A few minutes later, they were still struggling, so I said it again, Why don't we use the hover mat?

      Again, I was ignored, so I just stood there and guarded my table.

      Twenty minutes or so goes by, and they finally have a plan. Everyone is going to grab a piece of the

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