"Life Time" is the 11th episode in the eighth season of the CBS television series M*A*S*H. It originally aired on November 26, 1979, it was directed by Alan Alda and was co-written by Alan Alda and Dr. Walter D. Dishell, M.D., the latter of whom was the show's medical consultant, along with phantom assistance from authors W.C. Heinz, Ring Lardner, Jr., who had written the script for the film MASH, and even Richard Hooker, himself a former U.S. Army MASH unit surgeon, and author of the 1968 novel MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors, from which the film and series both drew their inspirations.
Plot synopsis
In an episode where the story is told in real time, a wounded soldier arrives at the camp with a lacerated aorta, and the doctors rush to perform an arterial graft before it is too late. Hawkeye and the team have less than 20 minutes to replace a wounded GI's aorta graft, or he risks permanent paralysis.