Excerpt: Diary of an (Almost) Doctor

The patient is already under anesthesia in the OR. Elizabeth brings me into the room and introduces me to the junior resident, Jason. Maybe it’s my imagination, but Jason doesn’t look too excited to see me. Actually, he kind of sneers when we get introduced. “Why don’t you and Amy put in the Foley?” Elizabeth suggests.

The Foley catheter is inserted in the bladder during a surgery. I guess so the patients don’t pee on themselves. Jason pulls a Foley kit out and gives me a look. “Have you done this before?” he asks.

I haven’t, but I’m kind of wondering if I should lie and say I have. I know if I tell him I haven’t done it, he’s going to sneer at me again. “I’ve seen it done,” is my compromise. I haven’t, but he doesn’t know that. He sneers anyway.

We open up the Foley kit. Inside is some tubing that goes into the bladder connected to a bag, a drape, sterile gloves, and some betadyne to scrub the patient’s nether regions. I pick up the gloves to put them on.

“You did that wrong,” Jason says. “The gloves aren’t sterile anymore.”

“Oh,” I say.

We get me a new pair of gloves. Jason asks me what my size is. I have no idea. “How could you not know?” he asks me.

How would I know that? Do random people on the street know what their size in sterile latex gloves is? Fortunately, a nurse looks at my hands and says she thinks I’m a size 6. I get out a pair of size 6 gloves and the nurse helps me to put them on in a sterile way. They fit, thank goodness.

Jason instructs me to scrub the patient’s urethral area, which I do as well as someone could do such a thing, I guess. He tells me that it’s a lot harder to put a catheter in a female patient, so I’m going to have my work cut out for me.

“Jesus Christ!” Jason screams at me. “Why are you touching her leg? Now you’re not sterile again!”

Oops.

Once I’ve got my third pair of sterile gloves on, Jason grumbles something about how the Foley isn’t supposed to take longer than the surgery. This really isn’t turning into a very pleasant experience for me, but I press on. I dab the catheter tubing with lubricant and look for where to put it in. “Where does it go?” I ask.

“In the hole,” Jason says.

“Which hole?”

Jason gives me this really exasperated look. “In the rectum, Amy. Where do you think a bladder catheter might go?”

Sheesh. A little direction might have been nice. I do see a hole though so I just cross my fingers and dive in. I’m relieved when I see urine flow into the catheter tube. “That’s the longest I’ve ever seen anyone take to put in a Foley ever,” Jason announces.