The attendings I’m with this month do some amazing surgeries. Shocking, actually. The procedures are necessary and lifesaving – but also brutal and mutilatory in a way I’ve never seen before, somehow even worse than burn surgery. The med students are standing there looking horrified, and I try to act cool, as though I have any idea what’s going on; but I don’t even know what the next general step is, and I can’t quite believe it when I see it happening.
They gave me the weekend off, and I don’t know what to do with myself. It would really be less boring to be back in the hospital. I want to know whether Mr. A will be any less depressed this morning, how Mr. D’s PE is coming, whether Mrs. R’s mysterious fever continues, and where it’s coming from. I suppose I should clean the house, but that won’t take long. I suppose I should study. That ought to occupy the rest of my time. The surgery intraining exam is in three weeks, and since the senior residents are scared of it, I can only imagine how much trouble the interns are going to be in. At least I get to go to church tomorrow, maybe for the only time this month.
The other day, being at loose ends at lunch time, I fell in with some medicine interns, whom I’ve been friends with since we suffered through ACLS and orientation together, and we sat down to eat in the cafeteria. I was enjoying talking about nonsurgical subjects (such as medical ICU patients – one of the interns was excitedly relating how he had finally gotten to do a central line – and the other interns’ children, and the nonexistence of global warming) when my least favorite surgery chief resident came in, with some other surgery residents. He sat down a couple tables over, and started taunting me for being on the dark side and having forgotten who I was. I said I was being friendly. “Well, don’t be too friendly, or they’ll start calling you to help with central lines.” “They already did,” I said flatly, and he finally left me alone. (I didn’t think it was necessary to add that the last time medicine had asked me for a friendly central line, I failed miserably, and had to be fished out by my senior.)
January 6, 2008 at 12:09 am
It took me two weeks into my vacation to feel like I was on vacation, and then when the semester ended I didn’t know what to do with myself!
Oh, I could have cleaned, or caught up on my reading, but I felt I needed (or should be) DOING something….
It’s pretty bad when a day off is spent thinking about what you’ve taken a day off FROM! : )
January 6, 2008 at 6:26 am
sounds like you are in head and neck surgery??? that’s where i saw some pretty freaky stuff.
January 6, 2008 at 5:44 pm
Bongi – No, it was something much simpler, an abdominoperineal resection. I mean, I’d figured from the name approximately what was going on, but when I looked it up the night before I only got as far as the abdominal part.
Kim – It’s not too bad when you’ve got two weeks off, then at least the last few days feel like vacation. But a weekend isn’t long enough by itself. I guess I’m learning how to make it work.
January 6, 2008 at 5:55 pm
ok. head and neck i do not do. ap resection i do quite a bit. in state i do both parts alone. takes much longer, but if you have no other option, time is no longer a factor.
January 7, 2008 at 6:00 pm
I filmed an abdominoperineal resection just before Christmas.
Although a rather bizarre sight (the nurse accompanying me had to leave) I think both the resection and the reconstruction of the perineum (rectus myocutan flap) were very interesting.
It’s amazing what you can do to a body and still, on the whole, improve a persons life.
January 7, 2008 at 6:09 pm
Good response to your senior. Hope you enjoyed the rest of your weekend.