Was involved in a 4 hour surgery last night. Stone removal from an artifical bladder they had made for the guy a year ago. One of his stones was so fucking big it took us 2 hours and some pretty ingenious inventions by the surgeon to nab it. He had to "afro-engineer" his basket capture device (very small wire with a "cage" made of nylon fibers) that then went down with the endoscope (tiny flexible camera so we could see it). It was funny, in a way - like being a spectator during some sort of strange game. We kept holding our breaths, encouraging the surgeon, etc. He was cool, though - kept cracking jokes the whole time.
Twice we got the stone all the way to the entry site on the guy's belly, but the damn thing was so big it wouldn't come out through the hole in his belly and popped back in. Our last attempt, though, nabbed the sucker. DAMN it was so fucking big - made a loud "PLUNK" sound when dropped into the cup we used to hold the other stones.
Longest surgery I've yet been involved in. Whew.
PS - what was VERY cool was seeing this all inside him, in color, in real time. Used a Fujinon camera - they make damn good optics (I have one of their scopes - very nice!)