Plight of the proseal plier!

let me buzz...

Proseal LMA is an improved supraglottic device with a drain port and a dorsal cuff incorporated for better seal and prevention of aspiration… the multitude of adjectives and traits kept ogling out from the vociferous tone of my well read superior. As a fresher, u just can’t imagine that this floppy thing with 2 tubes and a hood of a spitting cobra is going to be ever so vital in the anesthesia scheme of things!
The first week went with poignant accounts of peruse checks, looking for cuff leaks and insertion techniques. You stand beside your superior watching them shovel the 2 tubed snake into a zonked out patient all in the name of maintenance of airway. Well ,wait the fun doesn’t end there, does it! You pump in some air into the cuff and volla!! Positive pressure ventilation seems a piece of cake! It couldn’t get more easier than this… just hold the reservoir bag and SQUEEZE!
But you couldn’t get away with scant solace when surrounded by airway addicts now, could you? Zipping back rewind mode to shoveling down the snake moment… bespectacled pair of observant eyes glaring through, the consultant says “..Hmm.. Judging by the way the bite block got nudged out with inflation, placement tho theek lag rahi hai. Connect the circuit and check for ventilation”, she says. Taking my role of a 1st year with a sense of pride, I obediently yank at the flinty circuit to connect it to the snake dude in the zonked out dude’s mouth. “Hmm…”,says my consultant, “jelly and ryle’s tube..”. my superior snatches the moment to drill some gyan into my ever fresh from MCQs mode cerebral cortex. “how do you check for correct placement?”, he asks. Now, as a first year, I need not be right with answers given the notion “ ye tho first year hai!’. I rant out calculated guesstimates of plausible methods from my vague memory. The fun thing about anesthesia is that all questions will be repeated. If you ask me,if you learn about 1 entity once, u can survive upto 3 weeks of drillbit questioning going by the number of repetitions of the questionnaire that all seniors tap from.
With the surgery resident onlooking with the praying mantis pose, all decked up in sterile disposable layers of paper, the patient is handed over to them. Brief interruptions of additional queries from the senior resident interrupt my tryst with the beeps, blips and bells that the monitor efficiently rants out. Reversal of anesthesia is the next moment of reckoning. Pump in some drugs IV and the dude starts breathing again. Adamant commands ensue to wake him up to get the snake out. “ Aankhen kholo,saans lo, gehri gehri saans lo”, goes my senior resident. Not to be left behind, I join the chanting for total vocal reversal of anesthesia! “ Suction!!”,commands my resident. The snake has to come out or the patient will chew on it to behead the slithering thing! Sounds like a harry potter tale of the weird kind!
The two tubed snake is out ,the patient wheeled out and the next patient walks in.Routine events with tubes cannot be more intriguing as this for a fresher now, wont u agree?
As a popular saying goes… for a fresher, anesthesia is TDBD..”Tube Daalo,Bag Dabaao!”