Eyeball Soap
by Mike Litrel, M.D.

instrument at the right time, shiny and sterile, placed in your hand like magic. None of this "make do with the eyeball soap" nonsense.

Or so I thought.

My first case was repairing a complex pelvic hernia. It's a three hour surgery, the object of which is to reposition the bladder and intestines back inside the body. This patient's hernia was particularly deep, so I decided to call for a classic surgical instrument - the Deschamps Ligature Carrier. It's a fourteen inch long, solid steel surgery tool that's good for placing sutures in hard-to-reach places. There are newer, fancier, jazzed-up instruments - your eyeball soaps, as it were - but for this case, there would be nothing like the good ol' Deschamps.

The circulating nurse had never heard of the "Deschamps."

I was stunned. The nurse took one look at my face and assured me she would find someone who had heard of it. Five minutes late I was beset with not one, but three nurses, all swearing up and down that they too had never heard of a "Deschamps Ligature Carrier." Maybe I had gotten the name wrong. Maybe I was confused. Maybe I had finally just lost my mind. Was I certain an instrument by that name really existed?

That was the last straw. Voice rising, I began declaiming: "On page 756 of Telinde's Operative Gynecology, there is a description of this surgical instrument that has been in use for over fifty years." I had no idea what page it was, of course, but I was sounding good even to myself. "In thirty minutes the Deschamps will be placed in my hand. And at that point you will see me smiling."

As the operation proceeded, the circulating nurses brought different instruments for my inspection, one after the other. None of them resembled the Deschamps in any way, shape or form. After a while the situation stopped being funny. I was truly becoming annoyed. But Kate, experienced OR nurse that she is, nipped my tantrum in the bud by asking me to describe exactly what the instrument looked like.

As I fuddled my way through a description, a light bulb went on behind her eyes. She left the room and promptly returned with three Deschamps Ligature Carriers. They had been masquerading under a different name with the orthopedic instruments.

So moments later, when I called for the instrument, the Deschamps magically appeared in my hand. It was like catching up with an old friend. It worked so well I wondered why I'd ever stopped using it in the first place.

As we finished that surgery, a wonderful feeling came over me. It was the feeling of success. It was the feeling of hot water on the skin on a cold morning. It was the feeling of opening up a brand new bar of fresh smelling soap.

It was the feeling of taking a wonderful shower. And no eyeball looking on.

Dr. Litrel is in practice at Cherokee Women's Health Specialists in Woodstock and Canton, and is a Clinical Assistant Professor at Emory University School of Medicine. He lives in Towne Lake with his wife Ann and their two sons Tyler and Joseph. (mikelitrel@attbi.com)

My children, Tyler and Joseph, each made a bar of soap from a gift kit they received for Christmas. One bar was translucent green, the other blue, and smack dab in the center of each was a roving plastic eyeball the size of a ping pong ball. The eyes were bloodshot and shifted around creepily. The soap itself didn't smell too good, either - to make it more repulsive, I suppose. You would never have dreamed of actually using it to clean yourself.

Think again. One recent morning I found myself in the shower running late for surgery, with not a sliver of Ivory to be found. At husband training school, they prepared us for moments like these, and I followed the protocol: I hollered downstairs to my wife for assistance.

Ann called up that she would put "soap" on the shopping list. She was getting the kids ready for school. She didn't want to hear any more about it. As I stood dripping wet and shivering in the hall, I wondered how and in what way "putting it on the list" helped me at that moment. Perhaps I had pictured my attentive wife running up the stairs in the blink of an eye, placing a fresh bar of soap in my hand and smiling at me adoringly. But it seemed Ann was in no mood for the helpless husband routine. She didn't even pretend to laugh when I asked her, why not run to the store right now?

I was on my own. Back in the bathroom I surveyed the terrain. There, perched on the edge of the bathtub were two eyeballs staring at me. Were they really made of soap? Desperate times called for desperate measures. I would soon find out.

There is nothing quite like taking a shower with a translucent blue chunk of smelly soap, with a bloodshot Cookie Monster eyeball in the middle. It's not as though you're alone. An additional observation I made was that there is no possible way to position the soap so that it is not ogling you.

My shower over, I could hardly wait to get to the hospital and the sanity of the operating room. The smell of the O.R., the cool temperature, immersing myself in the task at hand - I enjoy all of it. But most of all, I love the sense of order. Always the right