I often got asked what the hardest part of a surgical residency was. For me, it is was when there was a surgical complication. One such complication occurred in my final year of training. It was a young Ragdoll kitten undergoing surgery for peritoneal-pericardial diaphragmatic hernia repair. I'm not sure if it was having 3 Ragdolls myself, being tired/ stressed or the fact we had succeeded with multiple resuscitations before she finally succumbed to death despite our best efforts, but I broke down. The thing about breaking down when you are in a team, is that the whole team can sometimes then break down. We all stood there in ICU crying, because we had done our best, but were questioning ourselves on how we could have done better. It is a tough and emotional industry and I'm not sure what the answer is except to always try to learn and improve but then move on from it. We changed a protocol after this little kitten’s death to improve the speed in which we can calculate intra-operative blood loss and transfusion rates. For every complication, I will make an improvement, which is my commitment to this surgical journey. Always learning. Always improving (well until I retire, then I will just drink pink gin cocktails on the beach).
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