That was it for surgery and that was it for the ER for now. I'm a bit sad about it actually. My doctor and I were a pretty good team.
Monday was spent in Milan with a UW-Madison college friend of mine. I showed him around Milan a bit and we visited the World Expo 2015 taking place there. One of the coolest stops of the day was checking out the Chiesa di San Bernardino alle Ossa. There is a room decorated with hundreds if not thousands of human bones from a former cemetarty. I, the med student thought it was so cool. My rocket scientist friend (he's an actual rocket scientist), thought it was gruesome but then again cool at the same time.
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| Il Duomo, Milano, Italia |
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| Chiesa di San Bernardino Alle Ossa, Milano, Italia |
I am excited to see how internal medicine will be starting Monday. I expect to learn a lot and this expectation scares me a bit too. I don't want to end up sitting around all day again. If that does happen, I'll be right back in the ER.
I examined a man with an abdominal aorta aneurysm this past week. That was nifty. You could really feel a softball sized tumor in this mans stomach pulsating.
Thursday was weird. We might admit 1 or 2 patients a day on average in trauma surgery. This day, out of the 10 patients we saw until the afternoon meeting, 2 were kids and the parents opted to take the home rather than have them admitted, 6 were already admitted and the last two were ones we were working on. It was absolutely crazy and most of the time was spent with paper work.
I had one patient I was primarily working on. I really tried hard to take care of his case in a timely manner but it just wasn't possible. Either I was waiting for one of the doctors to see him, waiting for the x ray or the lab results. He had pain in the hip region about 4 months after a hip surgery. When I examined him, the pain didn't appear to be coming from the hip. My thought was that he might have a hernia. The physical examination wasn't very typical for one but it's usually the small ones that cause the most pain.
The surgeon on duty (vascular surgeon) took a look. She called the general surgery attending to come take a look. He said he'd bet his mother-in-law that it isn't a hernia. So I threw that theory out. My main objective was to exclude all the bad things it could be. Even checked his foot pluse with Doppler sonography. All good. In the end, we agreed that he had a tendinose. Since he was doing so well after the operation and in recovery and only started experiencing pain a few weeks ago, it correlates with the time he started to use his new hip more. This caused muscles to work differently than before the operation and which created the soreness at the location he was experiencing it. I apologized multiple times that everything took so long and that I was always bound to waiting on someone or something. He was very sweet though and wished me all the best in my career. Very sweet and understanding man.
Friday was busy but not crazy. At least we had patients that twisted their ankle or cut their finger instead of hip fractures and pain patients we had to admit the day before. I conveniently forgot my key at home and couldn't access my locker. I ran around in only blue scrubs, a pen and my phone all day. I was called nurse a few times. Interestingly, a lot of the patients born in the 1920's/'30's often call the other female doctors and I nurses. In their heads, women aren't doctors. We just go along with it. Sometimes they will be seen by three female doctors during the week who have all introduced themselves as such and when a male attending does rounds and they'll exclaim they are so happy to see a doctor......mhmm ok.
We had two older ladies that were rather entertaining. To say they had slight dementia would be an understatement. One was incredibly adorable, the other one called us stupid and told us to take down the cross from the wall because we were not worthy of it. While the one waited to be picked up from the ward and the other on the transporter back home, the lobby was filled with yelling from both ladies.
I left work on time because I still had to pick up some relatives and drive to Hamburg for my grandmas 85th birthday. We went out to the Reeperbahn Friday night with a huge gang of family members. It was hilarious to say the least.
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| After getting up after just 3 hours of sleep to take care of the munchkins, I had my sweet revenge when I made them wake up "the monster" aka my dad. |
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| On our way to the bakery! |
Monday morning it's back to the hospital and diving into a new department. Hope my expectations get somewhat fulfilled.
Stay healthy!
V
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