Thursday, August 11, 2011

Senior resident memories...

I had an awesome attending for my final year gyn-onc rotation. The man was an excellent doctor, surgeon, and all-around good guy.

So we were consulted at small hospital in suburban area of town affliated with big medical center for a pelvic mass. He took the phone call in the morning and we pulled up the films in the office. Yep, a big honkin' pelvic mass. Appropriate consult from admitting service.

I get sent over to SHISAOTAWBMC to do the H&P and get the paperwork done. Shit, she's had multiple laparatomies (double digits!) for Crohn's Disease. Her abdomen looks like a Munchhausen's patient. Our collective hearts sink.

Surgery get scheduled for the next day at 5 pm (Whisky Tango Foxtrot! I'm not on call that day...which means that on my rare non-call days, I'm going to be at the freaking hospital until god knows when doing the case!!!).

Make the midline incision. Concrete sub-cut tissue. Bowel, omentum, and fascia are all fused into one big fucking mess. After an hour of dissecting, I hear "I have no fucking idea what I'm looking at."

"That's NOT what I want to hear from you because I have NO FUCKING idea what I'm looking at, Sir!" I answer back. I'm one of his pets, so I can mouth off to him and not have my ass handed to me.

He smiled at me, and said "Well, the buck stops with me. Let's just go slow."

I got home after 11 that night. It ended up being a benign cystadenoma, but it was 15-20 cm in size IIRC.

1 comment:

Ruby said...

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