Snap, Please!

My wife is a nurse, and I, of course, spent about seven years in the Operating Room as a tech and assistant. So, of course, our conversations sometimes turn to things medical. This morning we were talking about tariffs. What does that have to do with medical stuff? Well, as you may be aware, many of our pharmaceuticals come from abroad. The next time you pick up your prescription, you might notice a difference in the price.

But that specifically was not what we were talking about. We were talking about things needed for sterile and surgical procedures. I was commenting that I wasn’t sure whether the disposable drapes, clips and other stuff used were imported, but I was willing to bet that much was. So I checked the Web, and at the American Hospital Supply site found out that among the things being imported from heavily tariffed countries were :

•PPE (gloves, gowns, face masks)

•Disposable medical devices

•Incontinence products and wipes

•Diagnostic equipment and electronic components

•Surgical tools and trays

Sweet. Now, I may be an idealistic fool, and an old one to boot, but I can see a day coming when I’ll be called to” re-up,” as we used to say in the Navy, and go back into the OR and show all the kids how we oldtimers used to do it in the old days. You can’t just pile things into an autoclave ( do you still have one, and do you know how to work it?). Things have to be placed carefully so the sterilizing steam penetrates and circulates. Will you use reusable fabric drapes, towels, and other items? They need to be folded and arranged in ways that allow the steam to penetrate, but facilitate drying on the next part of the cycle.

Then there are instruments. They have their needs as well. I could go on. Well, OK, I will. Take needles. Ouch. That’s right. In the day, we used reusable ones. They had to be sharpened correctly; otherwise, they hurt much more than the ones we use, which are disposable.

Do I have some advice? Yes. Get on the horn to your Congressmen, support the plaintiffs suing to overturn the current governmental idiocy. If you don’t you may roll into an OR some morning for a procedure, and there I’ll be, eighty years old, telling the young sprouts how we did things in the old days.

You say, “Please, anything but that!!!” Well, you better start hollering, because with the cost of everything going up I’m going to need to keep on working, and I kinda fancy a return to the OR as a new career track…I might even get a professional courtesy discount from some of the surgeons!

See you…