$\"\"$ <\/a>
Now, now, nurse. There will be plenty of time for sobbing after the surgery.<\/p><\/div>\n
The tutorial quickly walks me through the steps of how to cut a hole into someone’s arm and sew it back up. It’s pretty easy: you have a tray of the items you’ll be using, and the theatre sister tells you exactly what to do at every step. You start by shaving the area, disinfecting it with orange spray paint, then cutting it open by following the green dotted lines. There’s a little bit in the middle where you have to fiddle with sliders to adjust the anesthetic and infuse the patient if they lose too much blood, then you follow more dotted lines to stitch them back up.<\/p>\n
My first real surgical procedure is on a man who fell down while doing some shopping and cut his arm and hurt his leg. It amounts to giving him a couple stitches and a bandage, which doesn’t really seem to warrant a complete surgical staff and a sterile operating room. Also, how much of a spaz do you have to be to you tear open your arm while shopping? Despite my hatred for the patient and his stupid clumsy shopping behavior, I go about my task, carefully shaving around the wounds, and when that doesn’t satisfy the game, being certain to shave inside<\/em> the wounds as well. Then I stitch up the wounds, and wrap a bandage around the patients leg.<\/p>\n
$\"\"$ <\/a>
Stitching is tricky for new surgeons, especially those with attention-starved cats sitting in their laps.<\/p><\/div>\n
Once I’m done with the shopping guy, it’s on to a real<\/em> real procedure: removing someone’s appendix. First, I spray paint the guy’s stomach orange with disinfectant, then make an incision with a scalpel, then attach retractors to hold the wound open. Using forceps, I sever the connective tissue, then grab the tip of the appendix and carefully pull it out of the appendix hole I just made. This is what is known in medical circles as “really gross.”<\/p>\n
$\"\"$ <\/a>
Nurse, the patient appears to be infected with a large alien worm. Please hand me the medical flamethrower.<\/p><\/div>\n
Though I was definitely happier before I knew the human appendix looked like a penis, the procedure still seems to be going well, right up until the point where it starts going less well. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been neglecting what we qualified surgeons refer to as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153That Annoying Beeping Noise.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d This wuss on the slab apparently can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t handle having his stomach sliced open and his inner penis yanked out, and his vitals have gotten “Too Beepy” (again, qualified surgeon-speak). I’ve failed. The operation is over.<\/p>\n
With the patient dead due to my ignorance, I grimly check the clock on the wall and choose the option for “Declare Time Of Death In A Somber Tone Of Voice.” I click on the door to the waiting room, and inform the weeping family that we did everything we could, but unfortunately, their beloved whatsisname has died from an acute case of deadly stomach penises. Then I click on “Go Home To Giant Mansion” where the theater sister does her best to console me with tender, barely animated sex. Afterward, I lie awake, staring at the ceiling, and click on the option to “Wonder Why, With All My God-Given Surgical Talents, I Couldn’t Save Him, Dammit.”<\/p>\n
Okay, the preceding paragraph is a complete fabrication. What really happens is an angry window pops up and tells me the patients vitals went critical and they had to stop the operation. I guess they just stuffed his extra penis back into him, because I get to try again from the beginning.<\/p>\n
$\"\"$ <\/a>
One of the tools on my tray: the severed hand of a more talented surgeon.<\/p><\/div>\n
This time I’m more careful with my patient’s Beeps. As soon as I detect a change, I stop what I’m doing and start adjusting the anesthesia and infusion sliders to keep his vitals within acceptable limits. Again, I muff it, but on the third try I manage to keep his stupid fragile body alive long enough to kill his internal dong and sew him back up.<\/p>\n
By my third operation, I’m in the zone. I start skimming the instructions just long enough to spot the proper tool name, grab it, and click along the appropriate guidelines, fussing with the infusion and anesthetic sliders when I notice the patient’s vitals changing. Soon I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m blowing through hernia operations, cutting out tonsils, removing varicose veins, and repairing leg fractures (with a drill and giant screws) while barely paying attention to anything. The only procedure I’m having trouble with is bandaging, which is probably the only thing I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m actually qualified to do in real life.<\/p>\n
$\"\"$ <\/a>
I’ve implanted dual exhaust pipes in the patients leg, in a procedure the medical review board will later call “Pointless and irresponsible, yet bitchin'”<\/p><\/div>\n
Then, we reach the final operation, cataract surgery. Damn! It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s like the game knew my one weakness: unlike most people, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t enjoy the thought of someone sticking a knife into my eye. Even with the low-grade graphics, I’m not particularly comfortable messing around with a giant eyeball. As soon as I start destroying the lens of the eye, the patient goes from being Beepy to Too Beepy to Very Seriously Beepy Indeed. The operation is halted with half the patient’s eye cut out. Sorry! At least an eyepatch will let you look kinda cool in the meantime.<\/p>\n
$\"\"$ <\/a>
Nngh.<\/p><\/div>\n
Conclusion<\/strong>: I am a surgeon! And not even a terrible one, mostly. After a couple false starts and ten minutes of practice, it turns out surgery is super easy. You just sort of pay attention and do what the nurse tells you, and if you fail, you try again, and no one ever dies or sues you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Video games have led me to causing virtual wounds in others, but I thought I might try healing instead of hurting them in Surgery Simulator.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1842,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[770],"tags":[772,771,767,773],"class_list":["post-1834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sim-plicity","tag-ftr","tag-sim-plicity-3","tag-simulations","tag-surgeon","section-blog","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.screencuisine.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.screencuisine.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.screencuisine.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.screencuisine.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.screencuisine.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.screencuisine.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.screencuisine.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.screencuisine.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.screencuisine.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.screencuisine.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}