"Sir, I have come to inform you something" one of our professors said.
"What?" I asked. I could not make out from his voice how serious the matter was.
"A nurse dropped the laparoscope and broke its eyepiece" he said in the same tone.
This was a catastrophe. A price tag of 0.15 million rupess, three to five years in processing of purchase by inviting tenders, and endless tender meetings of the civic body flashed in front of my eyes. I did not say anything because I could not.
"She was saying she could stick it back with an adhesive" he said.
"Please ask her not to do so. The polymerizing adhesive will make the lens in the eyepiece opaque" I said. "Send it to the engineers to see if it can be repaired."
"That's what I told her" he said. "She will show it to you tomorrow."
The next day she showed it to me, intercepting us on our round of the wards. It looked like 'A' in the image below, while an original laparoscope is shown as 'B'. These images are the result of my D modeling, of course, not the real ones. We had only one laparoscope of that size. I could not get an unbroken one for comparison in a photograph.
I looked at it gravely for a few seconds and said "Oh! Now it is suitable for people with big noses. All they have to do is to put the broken part next to their noses."
Everyone laughed. For that moment at least I forgot about the price tag, the pain and the time of the tendering process of the civic body.
"What?" I asked. I could not make out from his voice how serious the matter was.
"A nurse dropped the laparoscope and broke its eyepiece" he said in the same tone.
This was a catastrophe. A price tag of 0.15 million rupess, three to five years in processing of purchase by inviting tenders, and endless tender meetings of the civic body flashed in front of my eyes. I did not say anything because I could not.
"She was saying she could stick it back with an adhesive" he said.
"Please ask her not to do so. The polymerizing adhesive will make the lens in the eyepiece opaque" I said. "Send it to the engineers to see if it can be repaired."
"That's what I told her" he said. "She will show it to you tomorrow."
The next day she showed it to me, intercepting us on our round of the wards. It looked like 'A' in the image below, while an original laparoscope is shown as 'B'. These images are the result of my D modeling, of course, not the real ones. We had only one laparoscope of that size. I could not get an unbroken one for comparison in a photograph.
I looked at it gravely for a few seconds and said "Oh! Now it is suitable for people with big noses. All they have to do is to put the broken part next to their noses."
Everyone laughed. For that moment at least I forgot about the price tag, the pain and the time of the tendering process of the civic body.
