finishing up the best rotation EVER

So, thus ends the best rotation I've had so far. Yes I worked crazy hours... (last week I worked 17+ hours shifts without being on call) and yes I've seen some fairly insane things, but I've gotten to experience a lot, do a lot, and read more than I think I did in some blocks last year...

I am going to Lima for a month for OB/GYN starting on Monday. They said I had four surgeries to do and some clinic monday. They failed to tell me what surgeries they were. This should be interesting!


Highlights from the month of ORTHO:

Just yesterday I got to set a fracture in a lady's arm. That was insane. I was scared to say the least, but I did it (with some help) and it went well. It lined up very well. I also am getting a lot of practice pulling fluid off knees and putting shots into knees. That's good, because I want to get good that before I go on my audition rotations later this year. (those are rotations at potential places I'd like to do my residency).

I got to help put screws into a hip fracture, and I did a lot of suturing. I think overall that I've learned a lot on this rotation.

It's really neat to follow the patients through. I saw some of the patients post-op in the office a few weeks later, and it was really great to see how much better they were doing. It's very exciting to see a field where you can make such a big difference in such a little time.

We've gotten a lot of snow up here in the last few days. I believe that ODOT of toledo has the theory that if you just ignore the snow, it'll go away on its own. Because I-75 had not been TOUCHED at all tuesday when I left work. We got probably 3 inches and it was just all right there to be driven on. They had not done anything in the 12 hours I was in the OR. It took me 45 mintues to get home (usually 20). Pretty pathetic.

One of our most interesting cases this month was a case we had last week. I had been in surgery for about 12 hours and then we got a consult. It was the ICU, they wanted us to come look at this lady's clavicle because it was broken on Xray. So we're going up there, and she had a huge abscess over it. We decided to at least drain the abscess at the bedside so that the infection didn't spread further, and when we opened it up, the clavicle was literally staring us in the face. The resident resisted the urge to just take the broken piece out, and we flushed the wound and packed it. They took her to surgery on Friday morning and when they removed the clavicle, she started oozing blood out. Apparently it fractured and went right through her subclavian vein (very important blood vessel...) They had to hold pressure and get the attending vascular surgeon to come in and sew it up. What a mess! Thank goodness nothing bad happened at bedside! Thats so scary! But it taught me a valuable lesson, just cuz u can't see it on xray doesn't mean its not there lol

So this weekend I have Friday off, and I will be spending it packing for my move to Lima. Other than that I probably won't be doing TOO much since I need to shift gears in my mind away from bones and into uteruses...uteri.... whatever

A few weeks ago I went to so BGSU play (and get beaten by) Notre Dame hockey. The style of play is different from ours back in Athens. There is no fighting. I don't know if its just cuz the rink is bigger, but I feel like they have more room to do plays and they set up well. I still prefer athens hockey any day, but at least it was some hockey :)