It was an unseasonably warm Monday morning in mid-October. Crusty-eyed and groggy, I was awake and out the door several hours before the sun even began to peek over the horizon. I was headed downtown to shadow an anesthesiologist at Magee-Womens Hospital in Pittsburgh. I didn’t know what to think or how to prepare for actually being in an operating room, but there I was driving down Ohio River Boulevard listening to my thoughts as the radio played in the background. The only other time I had ever seen a surgery was from an observation deck years ago; this day would turn out to be nothing like that experience. I have always loved chemistry and biology. I thought that the combination of that and my thirst for knowledge of the human anatomy would make this experience a rather valuable and worthwhile one.

Before I knew it, I was being thrown scrubs and whisked away to see my first surgery of the day, a tubal ligation done with a robot. Being in the operating room was a rush of nerves and excitement. I wanted to ask so many questions but felt like the slightest murmur would disrupt the intense focus and pointed exchanges between the surgeon and his team. I hardly remember this surgery as remarkable as it may have been. Instead of taking in the terminology, I remember the eerie, focused silence in the pitch black room as the surgeon-operated robot whistled while it toiled away as if it were an extension of the surgeon’s meticulous hands.

I thought it was fascinating. That was, until later in the day when I saw Dr. Digiola perform a knee replacement before I could blink. Twenty minutes was all it took. He and his team first cut open the patient who slowly began to resemble a ghost, turning yellow then white. They then sawed away at the bone they were removing like carpenters making fine adjustments to a door that was a bit too large for the doorway in which it was supposed to rest. The precision with which they put in a replacement was bewildering, and I’m sure my facial expression gave away my amazement because shortly after exiting the operating room, Dr. Derenzo, my family friend, confirmed my expression of amazement.

“You witnessed the best in the business. He's truly remarkable”

Later on, I came to find out that he selects his own team of surgical technicians, anesthesiologists, etc. because only an esoteric group can understand and perform to the level he expects his team to perform in the operating room. This procedure left me wanting to be in his shoes one day because of the precision and focus he had and the help he gave to people who had trouble getting around because the pain in their knee was so bad.

The remainder of the day was rather uneventful comparatively. It wasn’t that I didn’t learn a lot. I did. I learned how the life of a surgeon often starts well before the sun rises and can be complete by lunch time. I learned that anesthesiologists have probably the most important job in the operating room next to the surgeon. Just imagine if a woman was giving birth and didn’t have anesthesia to subdue the pain experienced from contraction after contraction or even worse, a Caesarean section.

That was also among the procedures I had the privilege of witnessing. More accurately, it was traumatic. It was the only procedure that was loud, busy, and confusing all at once. The gynecologist delicately sliced away at the layers of scar tissue that had built up from the three previous Caesarean sections this patient had received. The white tissue, pulled taught inside her stomach would rip away at the touch of his blade and at last revealed the baby--a safe and problem-free delivery.

Since then I have thought back to everything I experienced that day and was increasingly noticing parallels between what it meant to me and the Caesarean section. Ever since I was a six year old prospective Major League Baseball player, I wanted to be a doctor. I didn’t know anything about it, but in the years since, a blade has slowly cut away at what was unknown to me about the profession. When I saw the twenty minute knee replacement, the final incision was made, and I was exposed and ready to jump into the world of medicine. What once seemed like a potential career path, now is my vocation.