Bloody experience

To most people, the sight of blood is, well, unsightly. 

Not Baldwin High School senior Tionna Johnson, though. To Tionna, the sight of blood, guts and internal organs represents her future. Her future in medicine. 

At 17, the future medical professional is already in her third shadow or internship program. Through a joint program between Baldwin High’s Medical/Health Sciences Career Academy and Mercy Medical Center in Rockville Centre, Tionna is getting a jump on future medical studies as well as a firsthand, up-close look at surgical procedures. 

And she says she has found that she’s fascinated by the sight of the inner workings of a human being.  

And speaking of inner workings, at Mercy, Johnson got that close-up look when she put in time in the radiology department, where she observed X-ray and MRI procedures. Besides her work at Mercy, Johnson has shadowed – that is, followed doctors and other medical personnel – at facilities including Hofstra Northwell School of Medicine and the Lions Eye Bank at Franklin Hospital. 

And the blood and guts? It doesn’t faze Johnson, the daughter of Kisha Johnson-George and Reginald George. “I thought I was comfortable with the blood,” said Johnson. “That’s good to know for when I see surgeries.” 

Still, the sight of what happens in an operating room came as something of a shock. “They use a mallet or hammer,” she said of one operation she witnessed. “You’re not sure what’s going on. [I was thinking] I’m so glad this person [the patient] is under anesthesia. You see the doctor using force.” 

But the budding scientist said she recognized that what she saw is “not as it seems. There’s more depth to it.” 

At another procedure she witnessed, a colonoscopy, doctors removed a tumor. “They found a mass and thought it was another tumor, but it wasn’t,” she said. 

The program is preparing her not only for her future studies, Johnson said, but also showing her how doctors and medical personnel handle the sights and smells found in an operating room. She said she always imagined surgeons “to be strict,” that they would “go in and do what they have to do, and then leave.” But she said she was pleased to find that the doctors “have personalities and they make jokes.”