I Just Retweeted a Kidney [Comment]

The last place I imagined being was in an operating room following the minute-by-minute highlights of the significant kidney surgery being performed on Brian’s dad.

I’ve never met Brian’s dad. And that’s not much of a surprise. Brian lives in another state and is a personal person. From time to time in his life, I’ve described him as hermitic. Even today, inside the era of realtime web, Brian only lurks on Facebook and has published a life-time total of six tweets.

But that’s exactly where I was, via Twitter, a couple of months ago. Doctors at the Swedish Medical Center in Seattle wanted to tweet the surgery so that you can raise awareness about a new, less invasive method of removing tumors. So Brian followed the surgery on his computer. And like him, there I sat, looking at my stream of incoming tweets from NPR, tech pundits, friends, The Onion and the parents who were, at that very moment, removing a tumor from my friend’s dad. The updates featured photos from the operating room, including one of a health care provider who had his Twitter address embroidered into the back of his scrubs.

If you encounter many people who describe Twitter as a place where people simply share mundane details about their locations or what that they had for lunch, have I got some tweets for you.

Clamping arteries will minimize bleeding to supply a clear view of tumor for precise removal.

Now going to remove tumor.

Patient is solid as a rock. No bleeding.

Arteries clamped. Cutting out tumor now. Speed is everything.

Tumor removed. Under 5 minutes. Now suturing!

Once I was sufficiently relieved that the surgery was a hit, I was left with a huge question: Why would Brian’s notoriously private family have agreed to allow the hospital to tweet the surgery?

So I asked Brian and he gave me three reasons.

First, the family wanted to be supportive of the hospital due to the fine care they were providing. Like many things concerning the realtime aspect of the realtime web, I’m not quite sure what benefit is derived from tweeting from the operating room rather than simply posting an editorial or blog post after the surgery’s completion. But I certainly understand the need to be supportive of the hospital and even altruistic about sharing one’s medical experiences with future patients and their families.

Second, Brian and other relations wanted to get realtime updates on the surgery, STAT. Under normal circumstances, that might be almost unthinkable. Without the tweets, Brian knew he’d must watch for the surgery’s completion when a health care provider would come out and give the family an update. We operate in an era of realtime information when Google feels compelled to shave fractions of a second off the time we anticipate search results on any topic. So I imagine it’s more brutal than ever to sit down in a hospital room watching for one of several few pieces of knowledge that actually matter.

Brian’s mother sat, device-less, within the hospital waiting room during the procedure and therefore knew an awful lot lower than everyone else on earth. For Brian, there was no waiting. He got his updates every couple of minutes. It simply so happened that anybody who followed the Swedish Medical Center was also aware of a similar realtime updates.

Third and most importantly, Brian explained that his family had an instant sense of relief when the doctors asked if they can tweet the surgery. If the doctors wanted to exploit Twitter during this surgery, then they ought to view the procedure as fairly routine. The tweeting of the surgery actually helped to quell Brian’s concerns.

And while he probably wouldn’t verbalize it, I’m sure it made Brian feel supported that some friends were following along from their computer screens. He also later explained that it was form of nice turning his dad’s cohort on to the realtime revolution.

My siblings all knew what to do to follow along without any explanation. Going into it, my dad was probably responsive to Twitter but he had no idea what it actually was. The night before the surgery, he dialed up his retired golfing buddies back home as I coached him seeking to explain hash tags to an older crowd. After the surgery the old folks were calling to provide their good wishes and recount how cool it was to ” watch” the surgery. I sort of got the feeling that a seed have been planted in that retirement set back home and I had a sense of pride that my dad had something to do with it.

I’m still undecided I’d allow someone to tweet details about a private medical procedure. But I’d give it much more consideration after chatting with Brian about his family’s experience. a number of months ago, I might have argued that my realtime stream is a place too mundane and public to include anything of deeply personal importance. I’d much rather see the creation of a more private version of Twitter where doctors and patients can communicate without anything else of planet earth being let in on the conversation.

But I guess this can be where we live now. Critical and even personal events turns into more prevalent in my lifestream. That is the age of sharing. Why should I expect my internal organs to be bashful? Someday, it could possibly seem more odd not to tweet a surgery.

If I ever decide to let doctors tweet a surgery, I’m going to no less than make sure that they do it using my Twitter account. At this point, I’m pretty sure Brian’s dad’s kidney has more followers than I do.

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This post is tagged: health care provider, invasive method, place where people, solid as a rock, swedish medical center