That was the question my neighbor asked me as I stood at the door, clad in faux silk maroon yoga pants and a Carib t-shirt. The only way I could have looked less like a doctor is if I'd had a freshly lit crack pipe hanging out of the corner of my mouth.
"No... I'm a medical student."
My neighbor, who is an incredibly nice woman, presents the sliver in her hand; I do my best to remove and irrigate it, swab the injured finger with an alcohol prep pad, and apply a bandaid. "You're so gentle!" she exclaims.
Ha! So I got a patient... of course, I was more qualified to remove a sliver from her finger by virtue of having been EMT certed, since foreign-object removal has not been covered in histology, anatomy, or biochem.
Does that count as practicing medicine without a license? I have a certificate. I have many certificates. None of them proclaim me to be a doctor, but I have them, and that's what's important.
People don't seem to quite know what to make of "medical student", and I'm wondering if this is a common problem. Most of the hospital personnel just assumes I have *way* more experience than I actually do, likely thinking I'm in my 3rd or 4th year medical rotations, unless, of course, the anesthesiologist drills me on basic anatomy in front of them. Heh heh.
Now, the assumption that I am a doctor, while really really strange, since I don't feel anywhere near that, bothers me the least because it makes me feel all big and important, though also scared to death because people want me to do stuff, like not be stupid. When it comes to pre-docs, a lot of people seem to think that once you enter medical school you... you know, know something. What they don't seem to realize is that trusting their health to someone with half a year of basic sciences is virtually identical to running up to a freshmen physiology major and asking them the same... But no. Med school equals doctor knowledge. Maybe still requiring a supervisor, but competent. And my perspective is "dude... I'm still afraid to TOUCH you for fear that in my new baby-not-a-doc roll, I may break something off, or worse, get yelled at by the kind surgeon who's agreed to babysit me for the summer... and I say the word 'dude'! Come on, now!"
What I do mind are the girl=nurse ones. Nursing is an admirable profession, but if a woman says "I'm going to medical school", especially when she adds "in the Caribbean" should not be an invitation to chirp "Oh! You're going to be a nurse???" No... because then I'd be going to *nursing* school, wouldn't I? That's why the names are different. And I feel that nagging feminism sensation rise up when I think "If I were a guy who said I was going to medical school, people would think 'doctor'"... and then I think "I'd better get used to that, because people will assume that I'm a nurse even ONCE I'm a doctor and some jackholes will even completely refuse to be treated by me and my evil ovaries, and then I will exploit the other direction of sexist assumptions and force them to buy me free drinks, fix my plumbing, and tune up my car."
And that makes me feel better, because if you haven't figured this out already, I'm enormously petty...
In other news, while microsomal cytochrome P450 liver enzymes may not be as boring as say, the stock exchange, cricket, or tournament golf, except for the part where tylenol kills alcoholics, it's pretty high on the list of "things that make Ishie go comatose".
Bed time!
Showing posts with label shadowing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label shadowing. Show all posts
Aug 2, 2007
Jun 27, 2007
Holy Hell!
Some explanation, perhaps.
As noted, in between shadowing, studying, and bumming, I've been burning off on side trips to explore the surroundings. Since I'm currently in Southern New Hampshire, this made a trip to Boston somewhat inevitable, since it seemed like something to see.
Unfortunately, since I went to school in California, while we were learning about the Gold Rush, everyone else in the country went to a class that said "Don't ever drive in Boston. Try to avoid driving in Massachusetts altogether. The people there are nearly as insane as the non-layout of the city which seems to have been hacked together by a deranged chimpanzee. If Boston were laid out anywhere near the way it is now during the Revolutionary War, we'd be speaking proper English, drinking good tea, eating bad food, and Paul Revere would, to this day, still be riding around in circles near Commonwealth going "Where the hell is the frigging freeway??? The map shows 14 of them here! I'm NEVER going to get these lights in the windows, and then all the poets will have to write about is a stupid red wheelbarrow beside the white chickens."
I've driven in San Francisco. This city features psychotic MUNI drivers and stop signs at the crest of 45 degree angled hills, double parking, one way streets, and nearly no parking.
I've driven in Tiajuana, where you have to dodge not only the statues arbitrarily placed in the middle of roads, but children selling various things that run at your cars, and the stigma of the California plate on the front and back end of your car that makes you a rolling target.
I've driven in Los Angeles, and love my impatient, SWAT team manuevering gun-toting amigos, and south of Pasadena, I am so in love with their much hated freeway system that I think I would get down on one knee and MARRY it if they'd allow such unions outside of Massachusetts.
I've driven through D.C., Salt Lake City, Atlanta, across the country via different routes twice, through blowing snow, over Donner Summit during a blizzard (a condition which has, in the past, led to cannibalism; I'm just saying), and yet all of this is a Sunday drive back from grandma's in comparison to Boston. Holy shit.
As I mentioned in the Montreal post, a city also notorious for bad driving habits, but which I found perfectly hospitable for lost tourists (save for the horse-drawn carriages in oldtown), when in a large city, I go with the general tradition of driving around sightseeing until I see freeway signs.
Don't. Ever. Do. That. In. Boston. There aren't any freeway signs. The freeways that are supposed to be there, as in, marked on maps, show no ways of accessing them, and roads that are straight on maps dead end into buildings forcing a quick left or right.
You'd think with a maze of schitzophrenic design and a town heavily inundated with tourists, the local drivers, like San Francisco, would have a built in element of patience with people. Not so. So I'm going to make a few suggestions:
First off, I hate it when people drift off at green lights too, but I own a stick shift. If I'm on a hill and you are three inches from my bumper, it's going to take me a leetle more time to get going as I am now ensuring that I don't roll back slightly and hit your tailgating ass. You also do not need to honk at me simply because the light has turned green and my foot is actively pressing down the clutch to take off. The only way you could conceivably honk that fast is if your hand was already on the horn, so kindly bite me.
Since we're on the topic of horns, while horns are certainly a fun novelty item in that they make a funny noise, and in Grenada, are used to say "hi", "screw you", "I'm here", "I know you", "It's clear", "It's not clear", and "you've run over my wife's foot", blaring the horn for no reason (such as the person in front of you being stopped at a red light) tends to inspire those of us with Los Angeles driving habits to reach for our nines. I'm just saying...
When driving, my rear bumper is not a security blanket for your front fender. I'm not sure why my driving 15 over the speed limit in a right hand lane is an invitation for you to ride me so hard I feel like I should be charging a fee, and then without real reason, for you to jerk into the empty other lane like you've had a seizure, but it's unsettling, and tends to elicit a similar reaction to the one above.
While it is exceedingly obnoxious that the roads are open expanses of asphalt without the limitations of lane markings, as I'm traveling, pulling up next to me and then gradually drifting into my passenger door as you contemplate either the Red Sox or man's place in the universe, is not appreciated.
While I appreciate that turn signals are too distracting to use in what must be the exhausting effort of remaining that precise two inches from the next person's bumper, your lack of using them means I am not going to know or act accordingly if you're coming over into my lane, thus ire on your part will not find a sympathetic recipient on mine. Similarly, if I put MY signal on, it is a statement of intent, thus gunning your engine to block me is only going to provide you a test of your brakes (and your horns). I drive a car that comes with a 5 cent redemption and I don't live in this country. Do you feel lucky?
Please examine the rotaries and strongly consider placing suggestions for right of way. The strategy of "Everyone" doesn't seem to be working and appears to cause you folks to even prey on each other from the number of horns blaring, lest you think tourists are the only ones that can't seem to navigate these. For the uninitiated, a rotary is like a roundabout, if a roundabout could speedball.
For your own safety and comfort, since you do like driving in the breakdown lanes, consider consulting (or hiring) city planners to remove the obstacles from the areas in which this behavior is actually legal. It is disturbing to drive in what the city has designated "a temporary" lane only to have a guardrail suddenly appear in the middle of it, which I gather annoys you too from the way you swing abruptly back into traffic (sans signal), nearly taking out whoever might be to the left of you.
So that was my beginning Boston impression. Since I knew parking there was even more elusive than San Francisco's and equally expensive, it was decided to simply head to Cape Cod, which, due to circling Boston for three hours and a trip to Sears to repair a tire (nice potholes, guys), we never made. We did get as far as Plymouth once most things were closed, and I got a picture of the famous rock to prove I survived the trip through Boston and made it someplace famous.
Plymouth Rock is worth seeing because it's funny and even more spectacularly underwhelming than the Hope Diamond. I'd like to see the rest of the actual historical town which did look really cool, but the rock itself is surrounded by lights and faux Greco-Roman columns, which in turn are surrounded by historical markers, and it's... a rock. With "1620" carved on it. It's not really a big or impressive rock, in fact, save date, identical to other ocean rocks. I suppose the Pilgrims came across it and said "Wow! this rock already HAS 1620 carved on it! Well that's a time saver! Quick! Build some columns and get the camera."
Plymouth is also a surprisingly happening town for what I would have thought would be kind of a sleepy tourist town after dark, but instead it seems to suffer a local infestation of teenagers most of whom were white, packed into the local malt shop, and often clad in leather jackets, making me really feel like I'd wandered into a 1950s teen flick. I kept expecting Bobby to invite Mary Sue to the sock hop. Of course, the over 21s, myself included, took to hanging at the local blues joint, which was pretty cool and far less like an episode of the Twilight Zone.
Today? After dragging in at 2 in the morning having survived Massachusetts, it was back to the office to have everyone go "Ohhh. You drove in Boston? Silly girl... tsk tsk", but I got to watch a few procedures and meet some interesting patients since one of the docs seemed to be seeing his full collection of crazies. You know it's bad when you hear him mutter "page me in five minutes" to one of the medical assistants, for reasons that became obvious upon sitting in the session. Whew!
As noted, in between shadowing, studying, and bumming, I've been burning off on side trips to explore the surroundings. Since I'm currently in Southern New Hampshire, this made a trip to Boston somewhat inevitable, since it seemed like something to see.
Unfortunately, since I went to school in California, while we were learning about the Gold Rush, everyone else in the country went to a class that said "Don't ever drive in Boston. Try to avoid driving in Massachusetts altogether. The people there are nearly as insane as the non-layout of the city which seems to have been hacked together by a deranged chimpanzee. If Boston were laid out anywhere near the way it is now during the Revolutionary War, we'd be speaking proper English, drinking good tea, eating bad food, and Paul Revere would, to this day, still be riding around in circles near Commonwealth going "Where the hell is the frigging freeway??? The map shows 14 of them here! I'm NEVER going to get these lights in the windows, and then all the poets will have to write about is a stupid red wheelbarrow beside the white chickens."
I've driven in San Francisco. This city features psychotic MUNI drivers and stop signs at the crest of 45 degree angled hills, double parking, one way streets, and nearly no parking.
I've driven in Tiajuana, where you have to dodge not only the statues arbitrarily placed in the middle of roads, but children selling various things that run at your cars, and the stigma of the California plate on the front and back end of your car that makes you a rolling target.
I've driven in Los Angeles, and love my impatient, SWAT team manuevering gun-toting amigos, and south of Pasadena, I am so in love with their much hated freeway system that I think I would get down on one knee and MARRY it if they'd allow such unions outside of Massachusetts.
I've driven through D.C., Salt Lake City, Atlanta, across the country via different routes twice, through blowing snow, over Donner Summit during a blizzard (a condition which has, in the past, led to cannibalism; I'm just saying), and yet all of this is a Sunday drive back from grandma's in comparison to Boston. Holy shit.
As I mentioned in the Montreal post, a city also notorious for bad driving habits, but which I found perfectly hospitable for lost tourists (save for the horse-drawn carriages in oldtown), when in a large city, I go with the general tradition of driving around sightseeing until I see freeway signs.
Don't. Ever. Do. That. In. Boston. There aren't any freeway signs. The freeways that are supposed to be there, as in, marked on maps, show no ways of accessing them, and roads that are straight on maps dead end into buildings forcing a quick left or right.
You'd think with a maze of schitzophrenic design and a town heavily inundated with tourists, the local drivers, like San Francisco, would have a built in element of patience with people. Not so. So I'm going to make a few suggestions:
First off, I hate it when people drift off at green lights too, but I own a stick shift. If I'm on a hill and you are three inches from my bumper, it's going to take me a leetle more time to get going as I am now ensuring that I don't roll back slightly and hit your tailgating ass. You also do not need to honk at me simply because the light has turned green and my foot is actively pressing down the clutch to take off. The only way you could conceivably honk that fast is if your hand was already on the horn, so kindly bite me.
Since we're on the topic of horns, while horns are certainly a fun novelty item in that they make a funny noise, and in Grenada, are used to say "hi", "screw you", "I'm here", "I know you", "It's clear", "It's not clear", and "you've run over my wife's foot", blaring the horn for no reason (such as the person in front of you being stopped at a red light) tends to inspire those of us with Los Angeles driving habits to reach for our nines. I'm just saying...
When driving, my rear bumper is not a security blanket for your front fender. I'm not sure why my driving 15 over the speed limit in a right hand lane is an invitation for you to ride me so hard I feel like I should be charging a fee, and then without real reason, for you to jerk into the empty other lane like you've had a seizure, but it's unsettling, and tends to elicit a similar reaction to the one above.
While it is exceedingly obnoxious that the roads are open expanses of asphalt without the limitations of lane markings, as I'm traveling, pulling up next to me and then gradually drifting into my passenger door as you contemplate either the Red Sox or man's place in the universe, is not appreciated.
While I appreciate that turn signals are too distracting to use in what must be the exhausting effort of remaining that precise two inches from the next person's bumper, your lack of using them means I am not going to know or act accordingly if you're coming over into my lane, thus ire on your part will not find a sympathetic recipient on mine. Similarly, if I put MY signal on, it is a statement of intent, thus gunning your engine to block me is only going to provide you a test of your brakes (and your horns). I drive a car that comes with a 5 cent redemption and I don't live in this country. Do you feel lucky?
Please examine the rotaries and strongly consider placing suggestions for right of way. The strategy of "Everyone" doesn't seem to be working and appears to cause you folks to even prey on each other from the number of horns blaring, lest you think tourists are the only ones that can't seem to navigate these. For the uninitiated, a rotary is like a roundabout, if a roundabout could speedball.
For your own safety and comfort, since you do like driving in the breakdown lanes, consider consulting (or hiring) city planners to remove the obstacles from the areas in which this behavior is actually legal. It is disturbing to drive in what the city has designated "a temporary" lane only to have a guardrail suddenly appear in the middle of it, which I gather annoys you too from the way you swing abruptly back into traffic (sans signal), nearly taking out whoever might be to the left of you.
So that was my beginning Boston impression. Since I knew parking there was even more elusive than San Francisco's and equally expensive, it was decided to simply head to Cape Cod, which, due to circling Boston for three hours and a trip to Sears to repair a tire (nice potholes, guys), we never made. We did get as far as Plymouth once most things were closed, and I got a picture of the famous rock to prove I survived the trip through Boston and made it someplace famous.
Plymouth Rock is worth seeing because it's funny and even more spectacularly underwhelming than the Hope Diamond. I'd like to see the rest of the actual historical town which did look really cool, but the rock itself is surrounded by lights and faux Greco-Roman columns, which in turn are surrounded by historical markers, and it's... a rock. With "1620" carved on it. It's not really a big or impressive rock, in fact, save date, identical to other ocean rocks. I suppose the Pilgrims came across it and said "Wow! this rock already HAS 1620 carved on it! Well that's a time saver! Quick! Build some columns and get the camera."
Plymouth is also a surprisingly happening town for what I would have thought would be kind of a sleepy tourist town after dark, but instead it seems to suffer a local infestation of teenagers most of whom were white, packed into the local malt shop, and often clad in leather jackets, making me really feel like I'd wandered into a 1950s teen flick. I kept expecting Bobby to invite Mary Sue to the sock hop. Of course, the over 21s, myself included, took to hanging at the local blues joint, which was pretty cool and far less like an episode of the Twilight Zone.
Today? After dragging in at 2 in the morning having survived Massachusetts, it was back to the office to have everyone go "Ohhh. You drove in Boston? Silly girl... tsk tsk", but I got to watch a few procedures and meet some interesting patients since one of the docs seemed to be seeing his full collection of crazies. You know it's bad when you hear him mutter "page me in five minutes" to one of the medical assistants, for reasons that became obvious upon sitting in the session. Whew!
Jun 23, 2007
Surgery!
No pictures in *this* one, guys!
So, on Monday I was allowed into surgery, not scrubbed of course, but in. I got there at 6:30 am (Aiiieeeeee!!!!) so I could oversee the entire process including the preop. I was given a temporary locker in the nurse's locker room, where I could change into the surgical scrubs, a surgical cap (which I already had), and a pair of booties over my shoes.
The patient was already in the pre-op room, gowned and capped, but wide awake.
I talked to the patient for a good long time, who had avascular necrosis (this is where the blood supply is interrupted or terminated, causing death of the tissue, in this case, bone) causing a need for a knee replacement. The location of the necrosis was pretty rare, and the doctor had shown me an article on it at the office when he initially saw the patient.
After a while, the anesthesiologist showed up and immediately began drilling me on anatomy as he was doing a nerve block. Whoops!!! I did all right on the order of vessels through the femoral triangle, but I need to do the innervations below the knee better, because I completely screwed up what the femoral nerve does below the need (just provides sensation to the strip of skin down the front of the shin), so sorry SGU!!! I was studying for biochem at the time I was supposed to be refocusing on lower limb!
Though I initially got flustered at having questions shot at me and struggled to find the answers to questions I actually, for the most part knew, I was grateful for it as well. The guy was really nice and it gives me some preparation for my rotations and residency when people, that will probably be far less nice, will be shooting questions at me left and right, so I like being quizzed. It's harder than I would have thought. I also found myself overcompensating for what I don't know by overexplaining the stuff I do know (like where a femoral hernia goes), so I'll watch that.
Over the scrub sink, I grabbed my mask (no gloves), and wandered into the OR suite, watchng them set up. It's fun to see the sterile versus nonsterile, and I watched the scrub tech (sterile) scrub up while the circulating nurse (who runs the show and isn't sterile), opened up packages, being very careful not to touch the sterile stuff with in. It's like an antibacterial little dance.
They brought the patient in, swapped him/her (HIPAA rules, no identifying information) to the operating table and chose ME to try to wheel the large gurney out the door by myself. I've operated these things a dozen times, but for some reason, when you're trying to force one out a door that's not supposed to stay open for any length of time, you do stupid things like get the doorknob stuck through the rail. D'oh!
But no nasty comments from anyone there, fortunately, though I did get told to close the door where upon coming back (having been let back through the doors to the surgical wing by the surgeon, who was arriving in time to watch me lock myself out), I went through the wrong door (the one I'd gone out). D'oh again!!! Heh heh. Hey, first time in surgery; cut me some slack.
The anesthesiologist gestured for me to stand next to him, and answered a lot of my questions as I leaned over to see. There's a drape that separates the nonsterile head of the patient (and anesthesiologist) from the sterile body where the surgeon and scrub tech are working. I was constantly worried whether I was in the anesthesiologist's way, but he just chuckled and said "Just don't lean on the drape or touch anything blue and you'll be fine".
The surgery was pretty cool. There are so many individual important orthopedic tools, sizing, and such, plus the surgery itself, as far as motion is concerned, is pretty violent, with hammering and drilling and all, but with the tourniquet and suction, it was virtually bloodless, which I hadn't been expecting. What was really strange was when I was watching the patient's knee, which was completely open, and I could see both the end of the femur and the head of the tibia, with the kneecap pushed out of the way, the patient, due to the type of anesthesia, wasn't on a breathing tube and was snoring away in happy slumber! Bizarre! But cool.
Everything was closed up, with the surgeon having a much greater aptitude than I have for stitching (I really need to work on my stitches further; I'm not great, though I've only worked on cadavers). I went with the patient, who, upon waking, was feeling no pain, and talked to him/her for quite a while before wandering off to see if there was any place I was needed. I ended up hanging out in the surgical lounge with a couple of the anesthesiologists, the surgeon, and the sales rep from the company that makes the knee replacements.
During replacements, a rep from the company often comes, since that representative is an expert in the materials used, oversees the operation (though not sterile), and helps with things like sizing the implant. This makes talking to the reps fascinating since they've seen it all and really know the product as well as the operation, and since they aren't having to scrub in and do the pre-op medical stuff, if they're interested in talking (and this guy was), they have the time to tell you all sorts of cool stuff.
I didn't do the preop on the second patient, and got into the OR when they were doing the first incision. I stood next to the rep, which gave me a really good view of the whole procedure, which they were doing with a "uni", an implant they do for the medial (inside) of the knee if the outside is fine and all the ligaments are intact, so that the entire knee joint isn't loss, and the scar is smaller.
The rep answered a bunch more of my questions, including what all those scary tools were, and again, awesome experience.
After that, it was lunch time! Yummy! Drumsticks anyone?
So, on Monday I was allowed into surgery, not scrubbed of course, but in. I got there at 6:30 am (Aiiieeeeee!!!!) so I could oversee the entire process including the preop. I was given a temporary locker in the nurse's locker room, where I could change into the surgical scrubs, a surgical cap (which I already had), and a pair of booties over my shoes.
The patient was already in the pre-op room, gowned and capped, but wide awake.
I talked to the patient for a good long time, who had avascular necrosis (this is where the blood supply is interrupted or terminated, causing death of the tissue, in this case, bone) causing a need for a knee replacement. The location of the necrosis was pretty rare, and the doctor had shown me an article on it at the office when he initially saw the patient.
After a while, the anesthesiologist showed up and immediately began drilling me on anatomy as he was doing a nerve block. Whoops!!! I did all right on the order of vessels through the femoral triangle, but I need to do the innervations below the knee better, because I completely screwed up what the femoral nerve does below the need (just provides sensation to the strip of skin down the front of the shin), so sorry SGU!!! I was studying for biochem at the time I was supposed to be refocusing on lower limb!
Though I initially got flustered at having questions shot at me and struggled to find the answers to questions I actually, for the most part knew, I was grateful for it as well. The guy was really nice and it gives me some preparation for my rotations and residency when people, that will probably be far less nice, will be shooting questions at me left and right, so I like being quizzed. It's harder than I would have thought. I also found myself overcompensating for what I don't know by overexplaining the stuff I do know (like where a femoral hernia goes), so I'll watch that.
Over the scrub sink, I grabbed my mask (no gloves), and wandered into the OR suite, watchng them set up. It's fun to see the sterile versus nonsterile, and I watched the scrub tech (sterile) scrub up while the circulating nurse (who runs the show and isn't sterile), opened up packages, being very careful not to touch the sterile stuff with in. It's like an antibacterial little dance.
They brought the patient in, swapped him/her (HIPAA rules, no identifying information) to the operating table and chose ME to try to wheel the large gurney out the door by myself. I've operated these things a dozen times, but for some reason, when you're trying to force one out a door that's not supposed to stay open for any length of time, you do stupid things like get the doorknob stuck through the rail. D'oh!
But no nasty comments from anyone there, fortunately, though I did get told to close the door where upon coming back (having been let back through the doors to the surgical wing by the surgeon, who was arriving in time to watch me lock myself out), I went through the wrong door (the one I'd gone out). D'oh again!!! Heh heh. Hey, first time in surgery; cut me some slack.
The anesthesiologist gestured for me to stand next to him, and answered a lot of my questions as I leaned over to see. There's a drape that separates the nonsterile head of the patient (and anesthesiologist) from the sterile body where the surgeon and scrub tech are working. I was constantly worried whether I was in the anesthesiologist's way, but he just chuckled and said "Just don't lean on the drape or touch anything blue and you'll be fine".
The surgery was pretty cool. There are so many individual important orthopedic tools, sizing, and such, plus the surgery itself, as far as motion is concerned, is pretty violent, with hammering and drilling and all, but with the tourniquet and suction, it was virtually bloodless, which I hadn't been expecting. What was really strange was when I was watching the patient's knee, which was completely open, and I could see both the end of the femur and the head of the tibia, with the kneecap pushed out of the way, the patient, due to the type of anesthesia, wasn't on a breathing tube and was snoring away in happy slumber! Bizarre! But cool.
Everything was closed up, with the surgeon having a much greater aptitude than I have for stitching (I really need to work on my stitches further; I'm not great, though I've only worked on cadavers). I went with the patient, who, upon waking, was feeling no pain, and talked to him/her for quite a while before wandering off to see if there was any place I was needed. I ended up hanging out in the surgical lounge with a couple of the anesthesiologists, the surgeon, and the sales rep from the company that makes the knee replacements.
During replacements, a rep from the company often comes, since that representative is an expert in the materials used, oversees the operation (though not sterile), and helps with things like sizing the implant. This makes talking to the reps fascinating since they've seen it all and really know the product as well as the operation, and since they aren't having to scrub in and do the pre-op medical stuff, if they're interested in talking (and this guy was), they have the time to tell you all sorts of cool stuff.
I didn't do the preop on the second patient, and got into the OR when they were doing the first incision. I stood next to the rep, which gave me a really good view of the whole procedure, which they were doing with a "uni", an implant they do for the medial (inside) of the knee if the outside is fine and all the ligaments are intact, so that the entire knee joint isn't loss, and the scar is smaller.
The rep answered a bunch more of my questions, including what all those scary tools were, and again, awesome experience.
After that, it was lunch time! Yummy! Drumsticks anyone?
Jun 15, 2007
Lobster and surgery...
Those are two nouns that shouldn't be together, eh?
Tomorrow I'm heading up to Maine with the arbitrary goal of getting a lobster dinner, but with the general goal of sightseeing and possibly skirting up to Canada if the urge strikes me. I'm an on-the-road kind of gal and like to set meaningless destinations in the countryside because it gives me a chance to get out and drive, which is particularly fun in my tiny little manual shift Hyundai Accent. Of course, if I hit anything, you'll never hear from me again, because the safety rating is even lower than the grade I got in third quarter organic chemistry.
To give you some idea of the arbitrary destination thing, I once drove from North Carolina to Northern Georgia for a cup of coffee, North Carolina to South Carolina to look at the giant roadside butt (some know it as a peach, but those who've seen it know what I'm talking about), etc ad infinitim. Try it sometime. I also love little side trips and roadside attractions, which is how I once ended up in Solvang, CA, a town I had not ever known was there.
So Maine should be fun for a couple of days. Probably for longer than that, but I don't *have* longer than that because I'm reporting at 6:30 am for surgery on Monday.
In other words, the shadowing is going fantastically! Initially, I was going to watch two knee replacements and an ankle arthroscopy, but the latter got moved so now it's the two knee replacements, but AWESOME.
I don't think they'll let me scrub in, at least not for this one, and I'm not sure this hospital's policy on it, but I know that at least for the first surgery, the doc will put me in the corner in case I pass out, which considering hospital experiences and more critically, forensic experiences, I find unlikely, but hey, to a surgeon, when the alternative is having someone you've known for two weeks collapse un-sterile headfirst into your patient, is an understandable precaution.
In general, the shadowing is fun just in and of itself, with the surgery as gravy. I'm learning a *lot*, and I'm getting to work in a private practice, which I've never done before. Some pretty awesome x-rays too, though not as spectacular as the new trauma patients, of course.
So in case you hadn't noticed, this is somewhat filler material, but I should have pictures and stories of Maine, more on SGU, and non-HIPAA violating surgery details upon my return, preferably not blogged at 2 in the morning.
Tomorrow I'm heading up to Maine with the arbitrary goal of getting a lobster dinner, but with the general goal of sightseeing and possibly skirting up to Canada if the urge strikes me. I'm an on-the-road kind of gal and like to set meaningless destinations in the countryside because it gives me a chance to get out and drive, which is particularly fun in my tiny little manual shift Hyundai Accent. Of course, if I hit anything, you'll never hear from me again, because the safety rating is even lower than the grade I got in third quarter organic chemistry.
To give you some idea of the arbitrary destination thing, I once drove from North Carolina to Northern Georgia for a cup of coffee, North Carolina to South Carolina to look at the giant roadside butt (some know it as a peach, but those who've seen it know what I'm talking about), etc ad infinitim. Try it sometime. I also love little side trips and roadside attractions, which is how I once ended up in Solvang, CA, a town I had not ever known was there.
So Maine should be fun for a couple of days. Probably for longer than that, but I don't *have* longer than that because I'm reporting at 6:30 am for surgery on Monday.
In other words, the shadowing is going fantastically! Initially, I was going to watch two knee replacements and an ankle arthroscopy, but the latter got moved so now it's the two knee replacements, but AWESOME.
I don't think they'll let me scrub in, at least not for this one, and I'm not sure this hospital's policy on it, but I know that at least for the first surgery, the doc will put me in the corner in case I pass out, which considering hospital experiences and more critically, forensic experiences, I find unlikely, but hey, to a surgeon, when the alternative is having someone you've known for two weeks collapse un-sterile headfirst into your patient, is an understandable precaution.
In general, the shadowing is fun just in and of itself, with the surgery as gravy. I'm learning a *lot*, and I'm getting to work in a private practice, which I've never done before. Some pretty awesome x-rays too, though not as spectacular as the new trauma patients, of course.
So in case you hadn't noticed, this is somewhat filler material, but I should have pictures and stories of Maine, more on SGU, and non-HIPAA violating surgery details upon my return, preferably not blogged at 2 in the morning.
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