Calling Dr Casey

     

Surgeons were my heroes when I was a kid and continue to be my heroes today.

I once hoped to grow up to be like Dr Nugent Brand - movie-star-handsome surgeon, war hero, scratch-handicap golfer and all-round superior human being - but unfortunately the laws of nature regarding silk purses and sow's ears remain immutable.

Surgeons live at the pinnacle of the medical mountain, the lower slopes being occupied by other specialists, general practitioners, nurses, technicians, therapists, wardsmen, cleaners, cooks, office staff, typists - all there to merely get things ready for them.

The guy with the deep voice at the start of the Ben Casey television series used to say that surgeons needed "the eye of an eagle, the heart of a lion and the hands of a woman."

Therein lay my problem. I might well have had the eye of an eagle and the hands of a woman, but two out of three just doesn't cut it.

The slow path to enlightenment for me was the development of insight fostered by observation and experience. Two events during my years as a resident hospital doctor led me reluctantly to awareness of my limitations.

The first occurred when I was assisting a junior surgeon in a radical prostatectomy.

During the procedure, the depths of the patient's open pelvic cavity suddenly filled with arterial bleeding from a divided iliac artery branch. Like someone had turned on a tap. 

The young surgeon panicked - swearing, throwing instruments, wildly executing jabs with submerged artery forceps in the unseen depths of the blood-filled pelvic cavity.

The moment passed, the iliac artery was clamped and the situation was rectified.

But his moment of sheer panic, of totally bottling it, was burned into my brain forever. 

And I thought: if this classy dude can loose it in a crisis, what chance would I have.

The second occurred when I was a senior registrar in my chosen specialty.

My mentor and hero was a Mercedes-coupe-driving, stock-market-playing, high-society-frequenting, archetypal cool guy (think Sean Connery as James Bond). 
But he flew his own plane into the side of a mountain in bad weather.

I was learning to fly at that time, and after a brief period of reflection on our relative capabilities, decided to remain earthbound.

My point is this. 

Insight and experience enable us to come to terms with our abilities and limitations. 

We are who we are, and not who we would like to be. 

The most we can achieve is to do the best we can with what we've got.