Tuesday, October 8, 2013

"BAM I got your Appendix!" Day 2-- Nice to see y'all again :)

Call time 7AM.

Getting up early is just no fun. It would be more fun if I actually could fall asleep 8 hours earlier to be ready to go in the morning but I can't seem to fall asleep in time. Ugh.

We did morning rounds before the morning meeting. Dr.I, the intern and I went and saw the patients. Nothing exciting really happened here to talk about.

The morning meeting was on our level this morning for reasons I don't understand. Maybe its a Monday thing to meet in the big conference room. Who knows.

Today the interns got their introduction and "applause". I still think it is a very nice gesture.

We got to sign up for the operations we wanted to help in. I've always wanted to see a thyroid gland get removed and today we had a complete and hemi on the plan. I signed up for the complete since it was on the second position in OR 11 and would allow me a bit of time rather than head to the first point. There was a lecture for the interns that I attended. We discussed thorax emergencies with a cardiovascular thoracic surgeon.

So...about those knifes stabbed into the heart....



On the ward, I had to draw blood from two patients. The one had to have about 10 syringes removed. I felt like a vampire.....I have the teeth for it.



When I looked at the OR plan on the computer, I realized that "my" operation had been moved to position 1 and the other one was moved to the end of the plan in OR 09. Great. Now the other student was already down in the OR operating on the thyroid gland I wanted to help with and I was stuck with the other one that wasn't planned to start until 1:30PM. Boo.

I tried to find some work on the ward to keep me occupied. Unsuccessful, I asked Dr.I if it was okay if I went into the OR and looked at various operations until mine started. He said that was fine and that I should watch interesting things. Well...haha...I didn't say I was going to watch only general surgery procedures and Dr.I told me to watch interesting things. I find urology quite interesting.

I looked up who was operating on the computer and what procedures the urologist were doing. I got dressed and headed to the urology break room. There, I found my favorite male nurse. We chatted a bit and he told me to go into OR 03 and go visit Dr.H. That was the plan my friend.

I walked in and greeted everyone and they all seemed genuinely happy to see me there. Dr.H said he was waiting on one of my fellow students to help him with the varicocele operation he was doing. I was very tempted to just scrub in myself and help. We've done the operation together a few times. Sadly, two seconds later, the mentioned student showed up. She seemed to be quite new to the whole surgery thing. She seemed very nervous and even made herself unsterile once almost fully clothed and had to start all over again. I helped her out a bit here and there.

I stayed to watch and realized...I miss penises......on a professional level (seriously people, get your head out of the gutter.) I miss the atmosphere of the urology OR and the procedures and the humor! They invited me to stick around during their break (my operation kept getting pushed back further because the laproscopy was taking longer than planned). I stayed for the second varicocele operation as well. Once that was finished, I headed to my OR room to see what the deal was. It's my best friend's birthday today and I had told her I would be out of the hospital by 4PM. With all the delays, my operation wasn't planned to start until almost 4PM! Dr.K who was in OR 09 operating said she would let me know when the second laproscopy was finished.

I grabbed a quick tea and headed back to the ward. Both of the doctors responsible for the ward where in the OR so it was up to me and the intern to keep things going (which in reality didn't require much work) until the attending came to do rounds for the chief who was on a business trip.

I was very happy that the intern had been on the ward the last two days doing admissions because he knew what all the patients had whereas I try looking at files whenever I am on the ward to have somewhat of a clue as to what they have. We went through all the rooms and checked on the patients before heading to the afternoon meeting.

The doctor that did rounds was also the one doing the operation I was supposed to help with. I figured as long as I follow him, I can't miss the operation. One of the other interns said he would do the operation since it wasn't scheduled to start until 5PM and he figured I didn't want to stick around for that. I told him that if it didn't happen to be my best friend's birthday and/or he had a hot date, I would stay. He talked to the doctor about it starting at 5PM and all the doctor said was, "Unless they start in the next 20 minutes, I'm not doing any more operations today." Well okay then. Sucks for the patient that hasn't eaten all day and has been waiting for this operation but at the same time the doctor has been working since 7AM and maybe it's better he operates when he is fresh. That's just how it is in a big hospital like ours.

I am going to try to really read up on our patients tomorrow and find an interesting operation to watch otherwise I might have to stop by urology again :)

Baci, V

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