Amazing Week

So it's been a while since I last posted anything, and last week was a pretty awesome week, I must say.

Sunday: Went into the hospital at 6:30am and was done by 9:30am. Got the vitals (temperature, heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen saturation, ins & outs, etc) and saw my 2 patients all in about 35 minutes. Pretty epic efficiency there! :-D The rest of the day was all mine to do whatever, lol.

Monday: There was only 1 surgery that day and the other JMS (junior med student) scrubbed in. I took that time to do some reading and studying. Pretty chill day.

Tuesday: Unremarkable day of surgery. But afterwards I headed over to the LGBT student org's meet and greet at a faculty's house. How apt that it was on the day that DADT was repealed, lol. It was good seeing people and hanging out. I met an internal medicine intern who was so hot (and hilarious). I couldn't take my eyes off him after I talked to him for like, 15 minutes. We had some great conversations . . . basically bonded over our hatred of surgery, lol. After the social, several of us (said intern had to work the next day, bah) walked down to a nearby wine shop and had some wine. I came out to one of my friends there (it was loud enough there that I don't think anyone else heard, not that I really cared). Funny that she never asked me before even though we were both on the LGBT student org board the year before.

Wednesday: Long day of lectures. That's how Wednesdays goes. No surgeries were planned for the day so it wasn't like we missed anything. Later that evening I had a meeting with a friend to discuss one of the student committees we're both heading. Some good progress was made.

Thursday: I scrubbed in an open umbilical hernia repair. I successfully proved myself to the chief resident that I can, indeed, tie knots with 2 pairs of gloves on! Pretty short and sweet surgical procedure. I like these as they last less than 1.5 hours. Later in the afternoon I had a meeting with the Dean of Student Diversity, which was interesting as always. Thankfully I didn't have to return to surgery afterwards.

Friday: I scrubbed in 2 more open umbilical hernia repairs. I was allowed to close the wound with a subcutaneous suture after the chief resident started it for me. I must say, I did a pretty good job for not having done it since we practiced on pig's feet at the beginning of the month (and it was the most difficult suture for me to learn). The chief resident complimented me. :-)

After surgery ended (somewhat early), I headed over to a friend's place for wine tasting (the same friend I came out to earlier on Tuesday). We met up with her husband and another mutual friend. I hadn't gone wine tasting before, and it was a pretty nice experience with friends. After wine tasting, we headed downtown to this new place for dinner. It was delicious!

Saturday: Headed home and attended my friend's wedding. I had known him since kindergarten and we were next-door neighbors until I moved away in 7th grade. Had a great time, will blog about that in detail later.

Overall: Again, pretty amazing week considering I'm still on my surgery rotation, lol. Evil resident was on vacation all week so I didn't have to worry about her ruining my day with her foul attitude. Chief resident was awesome, as always. We rounded late (around 7am) most days because the chief resident was tired and didn't feel like waking up any earlier than she needed to. I certainly wasn't about to object! There were fleeting moments where I actually enjoyed surgery. Shocking!! o_O

Darkness Before Dawn

Scrubs by ~Tjelsi on deviantART

For the past week or so I have been getting up between 4:15am and 5:30am so I can be in the hospital and ready to go between 5:00am and 6:30am. More often than not it's dark when I wake up and it's still dark by the time I walk in the hospital. Surgery rotation has begun in full. And I hate it. I knew this coming in, but I truly do dislike surgery.

To be fair, surgery is actually rather cool and most of the people have been surprisingly nice: chief resident - amazing, intern - really nice, attending surgeons - amazing, nurses - really amazing. As a med student, I don't get to do a whole lot in one sense. I hold the retractors (aka, the "learning sticks") a lot to keep the surgical sites open, I got to stitch once, I get to cut sutures, and I help dress wounds. Nothing particularly exciting. Although I must say that operating the camera for laproscopic procedures is pretty darn cool. I've decided that laproscopic procedures are my favorite (and quicker recovery for the patients too!). Our other major responsibility is keeping "the List" updated. The List is a list of all our surgical patients in the hospital, and we have to update it every morning with the 3 sets of vitals over the last 24 hours.

That said, my experience has been sullied mostly because I have to wake up before dawn every day (NOT cool) and "work" 12 hours most days. This week alone I've been in the hospital in some fashion for over 60 hours (a "light" week, and only 20 hours shy of the residents' work hour restriction). Also, one of my residents is rather cold towards the med students and frankly, kind of a bitch. I don't use that term lightly.

Today she was:
1. Very dismissive of me. Nothing I reported (other than vitals) seemed to matter to her. After we finished rounding on our patients and she was covering for another team, I went to touch base with her and let her know that I was going to do some charting and such. Her response before I could get more than 3 words in were, "Is this urgent? I'm busy, I do NOT have time for this right now. I don't have time for you right now."
2. Very rude to me and the nurses. In the elevator she complained to one of the attending physicians how the nurses aren't properly caring for one of our patients. Now I can't say if that's true or not, but ya know, nurses have a tough job too! Stop being so stuck up.
3. Was unprofessional towards an emergency department physician. The ED doc called us for a consult on a guy with a hernia. She basically chewed him out for not knowing how to "reduce" a hernia and told him to read a textbook, as that's knowledge that he should've learned as a med student. Then she sent me down to see the patient. I was able to reduce the hernia (yay!).

It took a lot of self-control not to talk back to her and be like, "No, you do have 20-30 seconds for me because I'm your student. I'm trying to learn, I'm getting work done, and I just wanted to keep you updated on what I'm doing. I'm trying to get work done FOR YOU so we don't have to stay any longer than necessary." Argh. I really dislike working with her. At least in the OR (operating room) she's not in any position to chew me out.

I'm counting down the days to my next rotation. I'm so done with surgery and I'm only a little over a week into it! I HATE waking up to the darkness before dawn. I HATE standing for hours on end in the OR (my feet, back, and shoulders get sore). And I HATE having work with this resident who gives us such attitude, and I have to work with her for the entirety of this month! Ugh. I miss medicine. And I CANNOT WAIT until pediatrics come November. And I've come to realize that I enjoy talking to my patients more than operating on them. I'll linger a little longer than perhaps I should each time I talk to one of my patients.

At least this one patient I saw today was super nice towards me. As we were waiting for the attending surgeon to come fix his wounds, he told me that the surgeons are great and great teachers (all true). And then I must've had this look on my face, cuz then he told me how glad he was to see so many fresh young people going into medicine and that I'll be a good doctor one day.