There are just somethings insurance doesn't cover, and it really shouldn't. I mean if you're gonna run around shoving things in all sorts of places or swallowing anything off the streets then that really should be out of pocket. Make you think twice.
For Beauty
Botox GIF by memecandyGiphy"Cement. I work in derma and had a couple of women come with cement injected in their face and didn't know why they couldn't feel their face/ do certain facial expressions. And yes, they wanted a discount dermatologist so they went to Mexico."
On the Cheek
"Neurosurgeon here. Guy came into the hospital with 3 days of headache out of nowhere. Head CT showed a large nail through the anterior skull base (think above the nose, between the forehead). When asked about it he had been using a pneumatic nail gun a couple days before. He remembered a moment when he didn't brace the gun right and it rebounded, hitting him in the face."
"It must have fired a nail when the end hit him in the face and he didn't realize it. He indeed did have a small wound in his cheek that fit with the story. Luckily the nail avoided the large blood vessels and other critical structures in the brain. We had to take him to surgery in order to pull it out. Cutting it out of his brain was weird."
T.M.I
"My dad used to work at a psych ward and a severely schizophrenic man got ahold of a pen and jammed it down his urethra. No one realized until the thing had calcified and he was going into organ failure. My dad doesn't know what happened to him, but I'm sure that must have been one gruesome surgery."
Dr. Psycho
"Obligatory not a surgeon but I read a news article about a surgeon who found someone's initials cauterized into a patients organ. Turns out it was a surgeon who had done a previous surgery and felt the need to leave his mark on a patient. I believe he lost his medical license over it."
Down the Hatch!
Pop Tv Eating GIF by Big Brother After DarkGiphy"Guy had put a cucumber down his throat and it broke off so he couldn't pull it back out. He came in with his wife."
I love cucumbers. Now I may have to avoid them altogether. Although I eat mine in pieces in a salad. I'm a novice I guess. And cauterizing patients? Now that is a Dateline NBC episode we need.
Cough it Up!
Cat Movie GIF by The Secret Life Of PetsGiphy"Bezoar (giant hair ball) in the exact shape of a stomach. Turns out, she worked at a hair salon and was eating OTHER PEOPLE'S HAIR!"
Snooker
"Dentist. We had 2 men come in to reception, one of whom had a snooker ball in his mouth. The man who didn't explained that they'd been at the snooker club down the road and his friend bet someone £50 that he could fit a snooker ball in his mouth. He won the bet then found he couldn't get it out. We had to sedate him and dislocate his jaw to remove it."
Lucky Fool
"Surgeon here. Trauma patient with who fell on steel rebar and it went in one side of the chest and out the other side long ways. Somehow missed his heart, esophagus, major arteries. We removed it with no critical injuries."
"I saw a show where they tested something like that - a guy had slipped and fell on a plant stake that went from the bottom right ribcage, up through the chest and out the left side of his neck."
"I think he even walked into the ER like that, and there was surprisingly little trauma for what looked absolutely horrible."
"The show came to the conclusion that his saving grace was that the stake was dull/not sharp, so it kinda pushed past everything critical without serious damage. Their experiment with a sharpened stake was much more lethal. Definitely one lucky guy."
A+E...
"I used to work in medical sales and one A+E Dr I visited had an 8 ball on his desk (it had a little stand and a glass case). I had to ask - thinking it was a pool competition trophy. It wasn't a pool competition trophy."
- ozzieowl
Don't Tell Me
"My mother in law used to be a scrub nurse and she told us a story about a patient they had in the OR who purposely cut up little bits of a metal coat hanger and barbed them so they couldn't be removed, then proceeded to shove them up his urethra. I can't remember the actual medical term for it but he was one of those people who had a mental health issue and wanted surgeries done so he would constantly do terrible things to himself because they would have to surgically correct them."
Tea or table?
spoon GIFGiphy"Not a surgeon. Knew someone who ate spoons. Just swallowed them and had surgery to remove them repeatedly. Batteries too."
Spoons, batteries and hair? Now I've heard it all. And it's more than I needed to know!
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Pre-ER.
I into a hawthorn bush a few years back, when out for a walk. I didn't seem to be hurt, but there was a small, round brown dot on the side of my little finger, right at the lower knuckle. And the joint didn't want to bend.
Curious, I took the tweezers from my Swiss Army knife and pulled at the dot... and out slid a 3/4-inch Haw-thorn. It didn't hurt, the knuckle worked fine, and it never got infected. Nature's needles, those things. carmium
With BBQ Sauce?
GiphyER surgeon, had to remove a chicken nugget from someone's bum. And no not a partially eaten one, a full, perfectly kept chicken nugget lodged unusually far up someone's butt.
This seemed rather recent, the guy showed up with his buddies and they were all clearly drunk. The reason the man required surgery was because the way the nugget was lodged. It was stuck behind the rectum, closer to the sigmoid colon.
The nugget would've passed on its own eventually, however we were worried about potential blockages and infection. The procedure required no cutting, so we opted in favor of surgery to avoid any complications.
It would have eventually, but the consequences of waiting were uncertain.
Don't Swallow.
A condom, no... not auto correct, I had to remove a condom from a patient's small intestine. They swallowed it. EarthySwing1029
The Abs....
My mum once spent an evening removing fish, chips and several pints of beer from a guy's abdominal cavity. H e got drunk and tried to kill himself by stabbing himself in the heart. But he missed and stabbed his stomach instead... so his dinner ended up floating around his abdominal cavity. err-what
11 Inches?!
Giphy11 inch cucumber, pickle jar and shards of glass. cassie039
Usually i let them pickle in the fridge for a couple weeks, but i guess this would work too. thesmokestack
Why is it always the butt?!
Not a surgeon but a nurse here. My patient had to get a 5 pound metal dumbbell remove from his rectum. The whole thing was shoved in there. Everyone was pretty amazed he pulled that off. He did serious damage to his insides though.
I also had a patient who "fell" on the large cap of a can of carpet cleaner and it lodged in his rectum.
We actually have a lot of people shoving stuff up their butts and not being able to get them out. Easy-Growth
Quite Impressive.
Not a surgeon but was on my ER rotation in med school. A guy came in and he had stuck an 8 inch glass dildo up his backside too far and lost it. I took a picture of the CT scan on my old phone. It was quite impressive to say the least. Tuhrontoh_TML
slurp....
Not about a person and I'm not a doctor but thought this was interesting/funny. When I was a kid our poor bloodhound LOVED to get into the trash. One day my mom saw him in the backyard really struggling to pinch it off so she walked out there to see what's up. She saw a still intact bread bag hangin' out his backside. She stepped on the end to give it some grip and I kid you not this dog took off running with a lil slurp upon exit. Poor guy.
And yes, we immediately got a trash can he could no longer access. stevegburg69
A Sand What?
GiphyI am not a surgeon but i knew someone who ran the x-rays at the hospital and she told me about this old man in his 60s that had to get a sand pit shovel removed from his butt. And it was entirely inside of the anus. tntreigns
Congratulations! It's a... Phillip's?
I'm OB/GYN. A patient came to Labor and Deliver around midnight with the following complaint, "My boyfriend was putting the crib together and he left stuff all over the bed. I was tired so I lay down to sleep and I think something got up inside me." I did a vaginal exam and pulled out a screwdriver, philips head. Thankfully it was handle side first, not pointy side towards baby. Papdoc
Bad Hopper!
GiphyGrasshopper leg from underneath the conjunctiva (outer layer of skin on the front of the eyeball).
Grasshopper jumped hard, ran into his eyeball. Got stuck and wiggled, part of the leg broke off. Grass-limper got away, but the foot/ankle did not. monkeysa47
STUCK!
Crayon from an ear canal.
Shampoo bottle from the rectum.
Jar of coconut oil from the rectum.
Rolled ball of aluminum foil from a male's urethra.
Pencil from a male's urethra.
There's more but those are the ones that stick out. Unluckily for them, those didn't... stick out... SucculentOwl
allegedly!!!!
When my friend was doing her nurses training in the ER a guy came in with an empty jam jar stuck up his bum, his excuse? - He had just had a shower & (whilst still wet) sat down in his chair. What he hadn't noticed was the empty jam jar on the chair & because he was wet & as a result, slippery the jam jar just happened to "slip" up his bottom... allegedly! Stabby-the-cat
Silly Corgi!
So true. Had a corgi who swallowed a cooked chicken whole, bones and all. No problem. He liked chewing up razor-sharp mussel shells, dead horseshoe crabs. The best was his expression when he licked up a gumdrop covered with tiny brown ants. He loved dried-up worms on the sidewalk. He was a tough guy, but even with that digestive tract he nearly died from food-poisoning a couple times! waupakisco
Go for 3?
GiphyOh man, not a surgeon but I did this.
Was eating jelly beans in the living room and I was not supposed to be eating in the living room. My dad came in and so I hid them in the most logical spot, my nose. Couldn't get them out so I had to go to the hospital to get them removed. Didn't do this once, but twice. squiddo_the_kiddo
THE WORST SMELL
I was running anesthesia on a chocolate lab for a foreign body surgery. Turns out he ate the owners used menstrual pad. That was THE WORST SMELL I have ever experienced in a career of pulling rotting garbage out of dogs intestines and cleaning up crap on the daily. BlackoutXForever
Mommy's First...
My friend had a child at 16 and was terrified of not being a good mother. She read lots of books and took every free parenting classes that was out there at that time.
Her daughter was around 2 when she started smelling really bad from her nose. She took her to the Doctor immediately still really scared of being called an unfit mother. The Doctor took a look and laugh. The kid had put a toy loose stuffing in her nose. They took it out and she was fine. She told me that she cried at lot more than her daughter. sonia72quebec
Turkey Day Chronicles.
Former nurse, called to ER for to set up for foreign body removal on Thanksgiving evening. OK someone didn't chew their turkey... super predictable holiday call. Arrive at ER and Doc says to set up a colonoscopy. Wait what? 20 y/o male had "fallen" on a shot glass. Look at the x-rays and yep, there it is' but something didn't look quite normal about it. Start the scope and find a rainbow blinking LED shot glass. Doc says, "So you think he wants us to take it out or just change the batteries?" mtcrabtree
Leave it In!
Honestly, a tiny, insignificant little speck of metal that a guy got in his arm. There was literally no reason it needed to come out because it had been there a long time and had never gotten infected or caused a problem. But he was absolutely dead set on having it out, even when I warned him that digging it out of his muscle was more likely to cause bleeding, scarring, pain, etc.
And he wasn't willing to do it with just local. Oh No. Had to be put under full general anesthesia, and after 3 minutes of waiting for the prep to dry I then spent about 4 seconds making an incision and popping out the dumb thing.
Second dumbest was a kid who fell in the woods, landed on an outstretched hand, and had a wound on their palm that never healed for literally months. Eventually got sent to me for evaluation, and I numbed up their hand and pulled out an almost one inch long chunk of some kind of plant stem that had been jammed up in their hand the whole time.Immortal_So_Far
Oh Granny.
Not butt, but once my grandmother, a life long alcoholic, forgot she had a tampon in and inserted another, jamming the first one up incredibly far.
She tried to get my poor grandfather, a man with zero training, to remove it. Even with a flash light and tweezers, he couldn't do it.
They went to the ER. Doctor said my grandfather futzing around her area had caused extra, unnecessary trauma.
I know this because toward the end of her life, she had dementia and she told us all sorts of weird stuff. She told this particular story in a fancy restaurant in front of most of our family and a mortified waiter.
R.I.P., Grandma. I miss your insane stories.
Edit: Thanks for the train award! Happy holidays to everyone! entomofile
"We've found Ken!"
GiphyNot my story, my friend is a radiographer. A guy came into the hospital with Barbie dolls up his butt. After scans, One came out without too much issue, but the other was too far up. They were worried that if it was pulled out, it's arms would open and puncture the bowel. So they scheduled surgery, the x-ray staff waiting excitedly for news... The surgeon then returned and with a serious voice announced: "We've found Ken!"
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, GO TO YOUR DOCTOR
Not a surgeon but, wowie wowie, do I know a LOT of cases involving "falling" on things and other such excuses. Here are just some of the things I know:
- A Buzz Lightyear action figure.
- A Barbie doll.
- Plaster of Paris (they wanted a mold of his colon. Instead, it had to be cut open as it was glued shut by the plaster)
- Glasses (the sight kind)
- Jewelry (mostly necklaces)
- A cucumber which, after proclaiming he fell over in the Garden naked and landed on his cucumber patch, STILL HAD THE TESCO WRAPPER ON IT.
- A light bulb.
Finally, on a rather dark note, if you're a fool who slipped something up their black hole (cos the butt sucks things in disturbingly well) they can't retrieve, please, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, GO TO YOUR DOCTOR. People have died due to toxic shock due to this crap, a guy here died of it in two weeks due to having a dildo stuck up their and never went to his doc's. Your pride can recover, but you can't recover from death. wolfyfancylads
Kinky Style.
Somewhere out there in the world there is that one deeply unfortunate person who was ACTUALLY cooking while naked, who DID slip on the kitchen floor, and whose ass really DID slam down on the freshly peeled potato. One in a million chance.
Poor guy probably went to the ER figuring "No one will ever believe me," and just told the attending physician, "I'm into some weird kinky tuber sex-play." whyenn
Mr. Potato Head.
GiphySon of a Doctor here. My dad removed an entire peeled sweet potato from someone's colon once. He swore that he had just slipped and fell on it. Salty_Knees
17 Barbie doll heads....
I was an RN at a busy Detroit emergency department. A homeless woman, frequent-flier and drug abuser came in to see us with abdominal pain. The x-ray revealed 17 oval-shaped objects in her vaginal space.
They were removed by a very diligent medical resident armed with a speculum and McGill forceps, with the aid of an ultra sound tech.
17 Barbie doll heads. Their removal was made a bit easier by their long hair.
EDIT: Former co-worker saw my post! Small world. Reminded me of the man with the small fluorescent bulb in his rectum. He insisted on the doctor in the ER just pulling it out, and sending him on his way. But those bulbs break very easily (lacerated colon) and are full of toxic chemicals (poisoning). Surgical removal was recommended, but he flatly refused, because hey, what would he tell his wife? He signed out AMA and we never saw him again. StreetBob2016
Diet Please.
GiphyI've seen a small size Fanta orange soda (can) get pulled straight out of a man's rectum. Luffywara
Blockage...
We received a patient with horrible pain that felt like constipation. He couldn't poop and laxatives weren't helping. We soon found out that the blockage wasn't just constipation, it was a string of beads several meters long that had become tangled into an ugly ball inside. I had to snip it apart and carefully pull pieces of it out. When most of it was out his moron became a rocket engine with diarrhea as the propellant. Pyrrhape
Side Salad...
I once had a flatmate who was a nurse. She had a patient who came in complaining of stomach pains, which was caused by the cucumber he'd shoved up his butt a couple of days earlier. Apparently the smell caused by pickling a cucumber in your colon is extremely nasty. scatteredloops
The Urethra.
Not the butt, close to it! My sister worked in a Urology clinic and has some very crazy stories ranging from "at-home sex change" procedures to this case in particular. She had to remove almost 200 bb's from a guys bladder via his urethra one by one! As the guy had a fetish of shoving things down is urethra. highsociety121
"sloshing"
GiphyEndo Tech here, had a guy come in with a capped section of PVC pipe filled with Mercury because he liked the "sloshing". Had to call in Hazmat and security had to be called when he became violent because they wouldn't give the Mercury laden pipe back. thadiator94
Don't Eat the Poop!
I'm a vet. Dog had eaten a whole roll of poop bags (the plastic baggies people use to clean up after their pets on walks). They unspooled in his gut and spread from stomach to colon. His owners realized what had happened when he started pooping out bags, and brought him in through ER. My coworker went in to cut him, and the scene she described was hilarious: he would intermittently strain a little, and poop out a little section of bags. Someone would tear them off, and he'd be ok for a bit then poop out some more. Like he was dispensing them for himself! He did great after surgery. PrettyButEmpty
Use it all Wisely....
ER Nurse. I've seen baseballs, loads of sex toys, cans of soda, vegetables. There should be a public service announcement about using thins in the bum. It needs to have some sort of base so it doesn't get lost up there. A doctor I worked with once told a man, "It's ok if you want to put things in your rectum. You just have to use the right things." amybpdx
Cued Up....
I wasn't the surgeon, I was the patients family doc, and took care of him in the hospital for his short stay after. He had a cue ball get stuck. Not sure exactly what he thought would be the way to get it out. We had a lot of trouble getting it out.
The conversation of the surgeons trying to come up with a way to get it out was pretty hilarious. tadgie
Had to remove it in pieces.
A enormous silicone plug which broke off at its base inside the patient. It was shaped like a soft cone on a stalk, with the base at the bottom. Had to remove it in pieces.
Also, an Orangina bottle two years before this plug. breathofdawildebeest
disappointing update....
Years ago my nurse wife told me a man had an apple removed from his butt but I never understood how this could be possible. I often think about this but have never asked her for more details. I'll ask her over the table at Christmas dinner tonight.
disappointing update.
I didn't ask her at the Christmas dinner. There were small children around and everyone was having a nice time, it didn't seem cool to bring it up. Also no one else started any butt stuff related conversations providing an opening for my inquiry.
I asked her today but also told her about my post on here. She didn't feel comfortable sharing the details with you guys so I guess you'll just have to use your imagination.
Someone posted about a similar situation and suggested they had possibly worked with my wife. Based on the details in their post I am sure it was a separate apple/butt incident. lowly_worm_
Meth is a hell of a drug.
A friend of my mine is a surgery resident and during one of her trauma shifts a meth head walked in with an incandescent light bulb in his colon... it was shoved in with the wide part first. They were dilating the rectum in an attempt to remove it and the resident in charge of the procedure managed to accidentally separate the metal base from the glass globe; which immediately shattered under the pressure if the colon.
They had to perform a partial colectomy to resolve the complication. Meth is a hell of a drug.
A foreign body per rectum is a fairly common occurrence. In my time rotating in the ER the most common things have been yuca roots, avocados, shampoo bottles, etc. But that lightbulb story is still unmatched... I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen the xray. HeisenV
I suspect it is still on......
ER doc here, as previous posters suggest, it becomes hard to distinguish what is weird any more, so judge for yourselves
3 lemons About a foot of broom handle A lightbulb (which did not survive is adventure) So many toilet brushes (inserted brush and handle first) A series of toothpicks Any number of bottles, aerosol cans, etc
My favorite case was a simple sex toy. We xrayed it and the radiologists report read: "There is an approximately 15cm cylindrical foreign body in the large intestine extending proximally from the rectum. Judging by the indistinct outline of the foreign body, I suspect it is still on." Mnonni
"fell on it in the shower."
Back when I was an ER tech, we had this guy come in with a full size bottle of VO5 shampoo up his butt. Of course he said he "fell on it in the shower." You could clearly see it on the X-ray, it was pretty spectacular. The best part was he knew exactly what needed to be done to get it out, suggesting that this wasn't the first time... he asked for conscious sedation and for someone to pull it out... well the ED doctor tried that, then tried to manually get it out with forceps.
He had to go to the operating room to get it taken out. I bumped into the surgeon a few days later and asked him how it went... he joked to me that "after we knocked him out, I grabbed a plunger out of the bathroom and got it out that way." But then told me all he had to do was stick some suction up there till he felt it connect, and then slowly pulled it out.
According to the surgeon, this guy never presented any sort of identification or insurance card, and demanded to pay his entire bill before he left (usually takes some time for bills to get finalized). He paid it completely in cash, and then left via a taxi. Cramer19
Behold the Light!
GiphyWhen I worked in the ER we had a guy come in with a 6 battery Maglite stuck up Main Street. The funny part is that it was inserted bulb out and it was turned ON.
So we laid him down prone and the doc spread his cheeks; then the room lit up like he just cracked open Marcellus Wallace's briefcase. reuben515
u/TheNerdymax asks:
Surgeons of reddit that do complex surgical procedures which take 8+ hours, how do you deal with things like lunch, breaks, and restroom runs when doing a surgery?
It is well thought out
GiphyThere are several ways surgeons deal with this. Before they scrub in, they have already mentally thought out their basic timeline in these really long cases. So, how much fluid, caffeine, food and type of food gets planned.
Coffee and pee break
I'm a liver transplant surgeon. I do more living donor than deceased donor transplants. They take longer, typically 8 to 12 hours depending on the complexity.
In most cases, there is a break at the point when the recipient liver is ready to come out but the donor liver is not. There is time for a coffee and a pee.
The extensive planning
Well, I had a 14+ hour brain surgery a couple years ago. It was supposed to be less than 8. I was having an electronic pacemaker type of device installed in there to help control my epilepsy. My neurologist and neurosurgeon had spent more than a month planning exactly where each wire and screw was going to go. No time for breaks.
Nap time is crucial
Level 1 trauma ICU nurse here. One of the longer surgeries for my unit was 23hrs on the table. I asked my cardiac surgeon how they are able to go for so long. He told me he started the emergent case when it arrived and at the 12hr mark relief team was in place to come in and take over. He stayed in the OR till the 16hr mark napped 4hrs then came back in.
It takes a village
GiphyAs someone who has worked in an OR here's what happens. They break scrub if they really have to piss. In large cases there are usually multiple surgeons to include residents, fellows, med students and interns.
When you are focused food is not an obstacle
It's not that hard to go that long without food or a break when you are that focused on something.
That being said, most cases aren't that long and if they are, it's ok to break scrub to eat/drink/bathroom/breastfeeding surgeon moms will go pump
Everything before hand
Hey. I'm a hand surgeon. For longer procedures you typically try to take care of everything beforehand. Eat, use the bathroom, make sure everything is good to go. The anesthesiologist would be in charge if I left the room, though.
Technicalities of "scrubbing out"
Trained in pediatric CV surgery. Many long cases. The surgeons and ancillary staff would scrub out. The lead surgeon would usually only take 1 break during a long case. (usually multiple surgeons in the same case) You will never see the surgeon and the anesthesiologist taking a break at the same time though. There always has to be an MD/DO present in the O.R.
Tag team surgeons
It's rarely a single surgeon, that's the simple answer
Especially in complex operations, there will always be a team of surgeons (often, there will be a trainee), and they will switch in and out based on the phase of the surgery.
The pros know, just do it!
GiphyI am a General Surgeon. You just do it. 12 - 15 hour cases are common. Some of these answers are ridiculous.
The diet Dr. Pepper gets them through
I'm a medical student, but during my surgery rotation, I worked on the hepatobiliary/transplant team which are notorious for long surgeries. There's often one attending physician, 1-3 residents at different levels of training, and a medical student for these long surgeries. I was in a Whipple procedure (very, very long), and at hour 7, the chief resident dismissed me and another resident to go to lunch, and then we came back after eating and peeing. The attending would pop in and out between this surgery and another one he was overseeing. The chief resident didn't take a single break for the entire 10 hours. Surgeons are weird, and they never pee, and they live on Uncrustable sandwiches and diet Dr. Pepper.
If it's not over, you keep going
I have a funny story about this. Surgery was my first clinical rotation during medical school. My first case was a very complicated neck cancer which required General Surgery, Vascular, and Plastics to remove a tumor and replace the patient's esophagus with part of his intestine. We started around 8:30, and by 11:30, I was thinking about lunch, wondering where we would go eat whenever we decided to break. By 12:30, I was getting kind of hungry, hoping we would break soon. At 1:30 I was thinking, "Surely, we have to break soon", and by 2:30 the realization hit me, "Gosh, I guess these guys just don't break for lunch, f*** me." 20 years later it seems obvious to me that if the case ain't done, you keep going until it is. You can scrub out to go pee if you have to, but in my specialty, if the case is going on that long, something's not right and you're so focused on fixing what's wrong that food and water don't even cross your mind.
Everything must be considered
In my experience, needing to blow your nose is a far bigger issue for everyone than hunger or needing to pee. Imagine spending five hours sniffing and feeling a drip on the end of your nose.
You do what you have to do
I've been a surgical nurse for years and I've been in my fair share of 12+ hour cases. Surgeries that are this complicated quite frequently involve more than one surgeon and their assistant(s), usually a PA or NP. A lot of the time they will tag each other in/out. Some of the longest cases I circulated were cancer surgeries that involved immediate first phase reconstruction, so you'd potentially have a cancer doc and a plastics doc, sometimes a neurosurgeon, etc. Each surgeon gets their turn, so there's opportunities for breaks. And in some cases, they just do what they have to do.
Concentration makes time fly
GiphyI'm a resident in a Department for neurosurgery. Our surgeries can last very long. If you are the surgeon time will fly because you are focused and concentrated. If you are the assistent it is sometimes very hard to stay concentrated and awake. Most of the time we use the Microscope during Brain surgery. Standing for Hours and looking in the microscope while trying to stay concentrated till the performing surgent needs your assistence can be brutally hard.
Break after 8 hours
6-8 hours are longer cases but I wouldn't typically plan to take a break during that. Time does go very fast when you are doing the operating. On OR days I routinely go most days without eating until I'm done with everything for the day and can sit down and enjoy it.
It's all about strategy
I frequently do long operations for complex reconstructions and time sort of passes without knowing. I typically eat a big breakfast but limit liquids other than standard small coffee.
When the surgery is a marathon and then some
My aunt had a recurring brain tumor. Skipping excessive detail, she was 22 years past her 3rd brain surgery when it was discovered that it had returned. Her 4th brain surgery took 10-hours. I met the surgeon afterward. He looked like he had just run an Iron Man.
When you are in the zone
I'm a veterinarian, and I do surgery a few times a month (I work with laboratory animals). For me the excitement and focus while doing surgery kind of shuts off everything else.
A sponge means break time
GiphyMedical student here, have been in 6+ hour procedures before. It's dependent on the procedure, but in our case we hit a roadblock that required another surgeon to come and evaluate. We had 2 surgeons, so while waiting for the consult, one surgeon along with me and a resident were told to go take a quick break. They just covered the opened area with sponges (they're more like towels but are called sponges), and we broke scrub to go out quick.
It takes training
I'm a cardiac surgeon. Routinely do operations in the 4-12hr range. I trained as a resident for 10 years after medical school to even start to practice independently. When you are a resident/fellow in a rigorous surgical field, you train your body to get used to those procedures and standing for that long.
Some surgeons are just wimps
Surgical trainee here- I've only scrubbed in 8 hour+ a couple times- the most recent being last month (simultaneous pancreas kidney transplant), where we started at 2pm and ended at 10.30pm.
I'm pretty young (26) so it's no big deal for me, but I do respect the fact that my bosses (40-60) manage to plow through too. Throughout medical school + training you just get used to it, no scratching itches, no toilet breaks, delayed meals.
Personally I don't have lunch for physique reasons (intermittent fasting) and can not eat for more than 30+ hours and still function pretty well. This is not my medical opinion, but I think 3 meals a day is just a social construct, I don't think humans actually need to eat that regularly.
They just do whatever they want
'm a perfusionist, which means I run the cardiopulmonary bypass machine during heart surgery. Often times, nurses and physicians have people they can call to come relieve them for a moment while they relieve themselves. Surgeons and anesthesiologists have a lot of power/clout in the operating room and can hold up the procedure for a bio break, but if a non-physician tried that it wouldn't go over well.
deprivation and candy
Surgeon here. Two things can happen, one, Im so focused on the procedure that I dont feel hungry until im done, and if I dont take liquids during the surgery usually I dont feel like I need to pee. Im talking about a 5 to 8 hr surgery. I try to go into long surgeries well fed. All this being said, Iv had to run to the bathroom for emergencies or felt a little weak for lack of food. They can put a candy in your mouth or something easy to eat, or you can just scrub out and then scrub in again. There are usually 2 to 3 surgeons scrubed in, and not every part of the surgery is critical, so there are moments where you can leave and your team can carry on for the time your out.
This is extreme
GiphyMy old roommate is a surgical tech.
He has told me that some surgeons have catheterized for long surgeries. Don't know how common that is, but it happens.
There is a prize for self control
Surgical subspeciality resident here - you get good at holding it and planing your hydration accordingly. I've gone 11-12 hours without pissing/drinking/eating. Food tastes delicious afterwards.
Short mental breaks are important
Not that big a deal honestly. Over the years of training you just get used to it. Usually I use the bathroom before I start a case. Very rarely during an unusually long case I may need a break for water or a snack. A break can help with mental fatigue as well. Usually I can find a stable minute to sneak out for 5 minutes if I need it.
I'm never hungry while I operate but can be starving after I'm done.
Time stops when you have a life in your hands
GiphyI assist in surgery. Honestly you forget about time.. A 8 hour surgery might seem long when you think about it but in reality you don't notice time passing.