Wikipedia has a nice run down. SVC sounds right, they state the tip of the blade was "touching the aorta". Sounds like they went for a thoracotomy to repair it. I'm an ICU nurse, the difference between what we do now and then is so fascinating.

Also it's pretty amazing what cardiothoracic surgery managed to achieve nearly 60 years ago!

Yep, this is really bothering me too. I've been sitting here for like five minutes trying to figure out what the "main vein" in the chest is. I'm guessing it's the SVC, right?

"Contentious-among-idiots"

Walking back from the bathroom in the middle of the night I saw out of the corner of my eye a [picture of a] lion - I jumped, for some reason thinking that the picture I walk past EVERY DAY had somehow become a real lion and fell down an entire flight of stairs, breaking my ankle.

I get mad about tangled lines until I remember every time I've ever taken someone to the scanner! It's pretty impossible not do, though I do wonder how the art line ends up looped around the ETT three times and twice around the catheter. Obviously the anaesthetists at my hospital love messing with us - I've seen tubes…

Seriously! I have a Masters degree in a science! I'm not a barista or a maid or your mother and if your hands and feet are still attached to your body, I'm going to make you do things for yourself - all the research which I have to read/be involved in to maintain my registration backs me up on this. You are showering…

Here's a question for you! Why mess with the ICU nurses? :p

I work in Paeds and I do this - to both parents. I call mum "Mum" and dad "Dad". Better than having someone flip the fuck out at you for making a mistake about their name.

I feel like The Truculent Truck should be posted yearly as a sort of benchmark for scary stories. I am still completely terrified by it and every once in a while will remember it and become scared all over again!

12 months later and I'm still fucking terrified by it!

omfg no

You definitely can NOT count on a person not to bite you. Any nurse will tell you that.

In the ICU I work in we swab everywhere once a week courtesy of infection control. Do we every do anything about the results of these swabs? Nope, so I have a huge problem doing them in the first place. They probably freaked out because they rarely see TB. My hospital is in a low socioeconomic area, we see suspected…

Bit of an overreaction by the health service, but I guess that's what happens when every second patient wants to sue you. They could have just assigned a single nurse to that patient and nobody else rather than scare the life out of everyone.

Probably didn't know. It can take a long time to realise you have TB (like months of unexplained weight loss, persistent cough etc) and because it's not very common anymore, it's often not the first thing doctors will test for unless you specifically know you have been exposed. There's a very good chance the health…

Is there a Nurses Thread yet? The clear winner will be in there. I don't have a particularly terrible one but I have had to use a yankeur sucker to vacuum up the ocean of liquid poo once at work. Another time a colleague was washing someones back and they coughed and squirted out a poo across my colleagues torso -…

Subarachnoid haemorrhages frequently present as "the worst headache of my life." That line will get you a ticket to the CT scanner, we take that shit very seriously!

I don't know that I'd use a "shock" collar for my dog, but I'm so close to looking into those vibrating collars - it seems much less cruel and my dogs incessant barking is driving me and my neighbours up the wall (he's become very territorial lately, especially considering for the first few months after I got him, I…

I don't know how New Kinja works but hopefully I can promote your excellent comment. I don't quite understand why this kid was able donate organs and not tissue (I have much more to do with certification of brain death in my field than the actual donation process), there are a lot of strange rules about who can donate…