So last night, Chad, Mike, Rosy, Ben, and Matty came over to my place to play poker.  Although the action was still heavy around 12:30AM, I had to kick everyone out because I had an early-morning shoot. I’m producing a reality pilot that focuses around a doctor who’s got a really amazing story and personality, ad we’ve been shooting different segments here and there. I was really vocal about my displeasure of this particular shoot, for several reasons:

1. It involved waking up at 6:30AM – something I don’t do all that often anymore. I am “self-employed”, which loosely translated means, “I wake up at noon”.

2. I had to shoot a surgery.  

I just got back from the hospital, and you know what? It wasn’t all that bad!  Initially, we were going to be filming a total foot amputation, due to a neglected wound – gangrene had set in, and this was the only option left. Fortunately for the patient, and my stomach, the surgical team determined they could try something less traumatic and save this dudes foot. Don’t ask me what the procedure was. All I know is that it involved removing large amounts of bone from the dudes ankle, and re-arranging a lot of local tissue.

The blood was minimal, surprisingly. I was sort of expecting a cartoonish gush of plasma when the blade opened him up, but the cauterizing knife eliminates a lot of that.  The two things that really surprised me, were the smell and the sound. Burning flesh smells like, well, burning flesh. It’s not potpourri. It’s like a mixture of burning tires, hot garbage, and iodine.  Wanna know what a bone saw sounds like? It sounds exactly like you’d think it sounds, which is to say it’s The Worst Sound Ever.  I really wasn’t prepared for the aural and olfactory assault.  I breathed through my mouth, and turned down the headphones as to not puke my guts out. 

 

Let's do this...

Let's do this...

All in all, still not as bad as I thought it would be. Although, I prefer shooting race cars and rock bands.

Now, back to eating your breakfasts….