Page 7 of Doctor Second Chance

“It’s hard to say for sure if you're going to have permanent nerve damage, but there’s a pretty good chance that you will. Our primary aim is to deal with the tendons. Once we are in your hand, we may find that we have to also deal with the nerve component as well. Most of the time, you’ll have some degree of both with an injury like this.”

That doesn’t sound promising. He really knows how to put the patient at ease.

“It’s hard to know the impact on the nerves from a scan. We will know more once we get in there with the scope.”

Um, okay. There’s nothing like assessing a major issue on a prominent limb on the fly. I thought doctors and surgeons were all-knowing. I do not get a lot of confident vibes from this fella.

“Since it has gotten so late, and this isn’t urgent, I have pushed surgery off until tomorrow morning, first thing. That way, I will have my vascular surgeon, Dr. Reeves, on hand if we need him.”

The sooner, the better, they said. Something about scar tissue forming and tissue dying. But apparently, that isn’t the case anymore. So much for getting in there as quickly as possible to get ahead of scar tissue.

The best-case scenario, he says, is that he will be in and out in a couple of hours and only have to fix the severed tendons. After surgery, he will be able to discuss rehab and recovery options.

This all seems like the pretty much worst fucking case scenario I can imagine, no matter what happens in the future.

TWO

Shep

8:21 pm

The waiting room is pandemonium. I’m the neurosurgeon on call this weekend. I never take holidays, but a last-minute change has me here on the fucking fourth of July.

As has been my luck recently, an emergency acute spinal injury came in. I’ve been here for five minutes, and it’s looking like it will be a shitstorm of a Saturday night—big shocker.

It’s my weekend with Opie, my four-year-old son. I wasn’t originally supposed to be on call, but the schedule got moved around, and here I am.

His mom, Ari, and I have our co-parenting schedule down, and things typically are very smooth unless something outside of our control throws a wrench in them, of course. For example, she is out of town for the weekend, and I’m unexpectedly on call and have to go in.

Thank goodness his nanny, Cason, could come to the house on such short notice. I’m surprised she wasn’t out celebrating like the rest of America. The fourth was Thursday, but so close to the weekend, it is like an extended firework show.

I had just put Opie to bed, so Cason really only has to sit on the sofa and scroll social media or whatever she would be doing at home. She is a very responsible person and is in grad school, so knowing her, she will study. Either way, she needs to be a warm body until I can get back home.

Now that I see what is coming into the ER, I feel confident I’ll be here for a while. Fuck.

I scan the sea of panic-stricken faces as stretchers and wheelchairs are rushed through the double doors. The multi-car pileup on I-65 has the ER bursting at the seams—nurses and techs bark orders, trying to triage the infinite trickle of injured victims.

“Hey, Marcus,” I call over to the emergency department attending. “Looks like you have your hands full.”

“Understatement,” he says as he rushes by. You couldn’t pay me enough to run the emergency room.

I’ve been called in to attend to a fifteen-year-old girl who got impaled on a disconnected picket from a nearby fence. She was jumping on a trampoline when she bounced off and landed on the quaint, paint-flecked pseudo sword.

The fence that enclosed her friend’s backyard, only five feet away from the death trap, is apparently in disrepair, and several pickets are coming off. She had the unlucky misfortune of landing right on the unconnected but erect post.

Who thought it was appropriate to put a trampoline so close to a line of wooden, pointy swords? Christ. The decisions some people make never cease to baffle me.

The patient, my patient, is awake and lying on her side, immobilized. She is able to move her extremities on command and is alert, but the scan shows that the picket was only millimeters, at most, away from severing her spine.

They called me in to make sure we don’t paralyze this girl when removing the picket and to hopefully keep all the important nerves surrounding it intact.

There are no certainties with this type of injury, but I’m the guy to do the job. To give her the best chance of keeping her safe and walking at the end of this. She’s lucky I’m the neuro on call today. I do not doubt that I can complete this successfully.

My last neuro fellowship finished just over a year ago. I’ve dedicated my entire life to school or training, starting when I was in kindergarten over twenty-five years ago. I went straight through college, then med school, residency, and two fellowships.

It feels good to put all that training to use as a neurosurgeon finally. I am revered in my field. I’m considered one of the best emerging neurosurgeons on the East Coast.

I love what I do, and I love cases like this. Yes, it is incredibly annoying when they come up at the end of the day on a Saturday or on a holiday weekend when I am with my son. But the precision and skill required to pull off a procedure like this give me purpose. I love this shit.

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