Wednesday, May 29, 2013

My name should be Grace.

Late afternoon. Patient is scheduled for follow-up, and having reviewed her test results, I thought surgery should be the plan.

I knock, open the door and promptly turn my right foot, twisting my ankle and ending up on the floor. "I think you need surgery!"

My M.A. was cracking up. Fortunately, this amused the patient as well.

Friday, May 24, 2013

Choices

Medicine is full of them - some are easy, like starting a family. Some are harder - do I choose medicine versus surgery for this problem?

Some are heartbreakingly awful. Any choice leads to a bad outcome. Allowing your seriously ill teen to enter hospice. Organ donation. Every clinical field can give examples, they're just more common in some like geriatrics and palliative medicine.

We don't have many, but the ones we have are big ones. And we just have to remember not to judge, for we have been lucky enough to live our lives not to have to make those decisions.   Yet.

Saturday, May 18, 2013

Academic versus Hicksville medicine

So I went to that conference recently. And a big name (a BIG name) in the field was talking about surgical safety. He mentioned that every time, one should introduce yourself to the others in the OR, because you probably wouldn't know everyone in the room.

I started laughing out loud. I pointed out that I knew the names of every single OR tech and nurse at our hospital (there's only 20 or so). Not only do we in smaller towns know that, we frequently know the kids' names and other small talk stuff.

Tertiary docs. HA!

Saturday, May 11, 2013

Happy Birthday

To the guy I love.

Sunday, May 5, 2013

Immaturity is to cherished

So I went to a gyn surgery conference this week. And at one of the lectures on prolapse surgery, the lecturer stated "You want to leave the OR with a good vagina."

I can't help it, I started giggling. Yes, I know, it's childish. But it was pretty damn funny.

Thursday, May 2, 2013

You can thank Fizzy for this

So her post today brought back memories from med school:

Rectal gangrene. A patient had been discharged from the hospital about 2 weeks early after having an AP resection. He had gone home and sat in chair, pretty much without moving. Why would he need to - he had a foley and colostomy. Came back in with gangrene of the buttocks.

I was good and was able to assist my resident in the debridings. I also was able to (barely) help with the frequent dressing changes in his room. I honestly think I honored that rotation because of this.


*shudder*