Crazy stuff

Since I've been on rotations, I've seen a lot of wild cases. Extreme things that my Doctors admit have never seen before or seldom do they deal with such things. I'm not sure that's a good thing, because when something routine comes along I may not actually know what the standard is.  That and while the weird stuff is happening, I don't even know what's going on most of the time. Yesterday was a good example.
A colostomy was created for a patient with significant rectal prolapse. No one wants to go in a bag, but it's actually the best option we had to offer this patient who has many other issues to deal with besides this one. So that was something you don't see everyday. It was followed not long after by an older patient who has been hospitalized for a while following an abdominal surgery. A decision was made to reinvestigate his belly because he hadn't been recovering as expected and may have a small bowel obstruction. Unfortunately, in the process of cutting into his abdomen this time his intestine was injured. The surgeons did what they could to salvage the situation. It's not what we wanted to happen, but that's why they discuss the risks of the procedure before the operation because less than desirable outcomes are a possibility even in the best, most experienced hands. I wasn't there when it happened so I came in on the case - belly fileted open, guts squirming around - and was a bit lost.
Unfortunately, there are some things you just can't fix. It's quite ingenious the solutions that they do come up with though. Now all we can do is wait and see what will happen next.