journal entry from nursing school. this was from my same-day-surgery experience.

I want to take this journal entry to debrief about the breast augmentation surgery I saw. As a student, it was a good experience. The surgeon was nice and explained what he was doing and the difference between his sub-muscular implantation site versus sub-glandular which has more risks involved including higher rate of infection.
It is important for nurses to be non-judgmental, and to never let their own feelings interfere with their level of care, so of course I made no personal comments to the hospital staff or the patient. But, now I have space in this journal to respond not as “student nurse” (robot) but as a real person. My feelings about breast implants are some things I had never really thought about before the surgery, but as I was watching the surgery I started to feel really sad for the patient. I wondered who was pressuring her to get these. I wondered who she was trying to impress. I wondered if anyone had called her ugly or made her feel like she was anything less than a product of God’s workmanship intentionally created with love. I wondered if it was me. It’s a pretty easy surgery, there’s not much blood or cutting, the surgeon himself said it wasn’t “real surgery” (he also said that anything a obstetric surgeon does—including c-sections—isn’t real surgery either, but that’s another journal entry…). Anyway, all that to say that if the surgery is so simple, why did it seem so violent to me? Just seeing the surgeon separating her pectoral muscles and inserting a balloon and inflating it to an ideal size (450 extra mls if you’re interested), then inserting this ball of fluid. I don’t know, there was nothing sexy about it, you know? It was fake and expensive, it took a lot of drugs, and it took intubation.
What a metaphor for the vainity of life though. How often do we entrust ourselves fully in other people to make us who we are? Sedate me, paralyze me, give me an artificial airway, program my oxygen, make me beautiful, give me the drugs to deal with the pain of your procedure. It is not a disease that brings us to the hospital. Or is it?
But how different am I? I wear make up, I put products in my hair. I’m not saying I can’t understand where this woman was coming from, or that I hold her decision against her. I just really hated the surgery. I hated what they did to her. Even though the surgery went well, and she’ll probably be happy with the results, I thought it was a terrible surgery, and I would not recommend it to anyone. Anyway, that’s just my thoughts about it as a person.