I’m halfway done with my ENT surgery selective, and as expected, I’m really enjoying the experience! A classmate and I recently watched a stapedectomy, a procedure in which the stapes, the smallest bone in the human body, was masterfully excised out of the middle ear and replaced by a prosthesis.…
The confines of a lecture hall are now a thing of the past. You are now on clinical rotations, which means you are no longer permitted to skip lectures in favor of streaming the recordings. You have to be at rounds. You have to see your patients everyday. You have…
I’ve not written anything for a long… long time. It’s probably the longest I’ve gone without reflecting about my encounters on the wards, but for those who’ve rotated through general surgery, you already know why this is the case – the long hours. I would routinely get home, find any…
Since there were no procedures scheduled for the operating room yesterday morning, I was dismissed after morning rounds – my last day of pediatric surgery. :-) I’ve summed up most of my thoughts regarding pedi surg in a prior post, so I’ll leave you with a frame that I will…
Last Thursday, a good classmate and I had the privilege of visiting a patient with metastatic cancer for our mandatory “palliative care experience.” Under the guidance of an attending physician, we explored how the patient coped with her diagnosis and subsequent therapies and probed her plans for the future.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my first week of pediatric surgery, it’s my inability to deal with the fact that young children are capable of such horrible illnesses. It disgusts me to think that there are “healthy” individuals out there who practice high risk behaviors on a daily basis…
Pediatric surgery is shaping up to be an excellent two weeks of variety and choice. Sure, we have to get in around 5:30 each morning to collect vitals on our 35+ patients, but after that, we’re free to see whatever procedures we want. The lounges are chock full of coffee,…
Unilateral facial pain with some subjective fevers, diaphoresis, and numbness/tingling in the same region. “So what medications are you taking?” I noticed the disproportionate opening of his mouth as he answered.” While we joked about random current events, I thought I saw a discrepancy in his eyelid elevation. And then…
T-minus two hours till the E.R. portion of this surgery rotation is over. I worked yesterday 7a-7p and had the morning/afternoon to finish reading the NMS Surgery Casebook today, but being ever-so-absent-minded, I left the book at Ben Taub. Instead, I spent the day playing computer games. After all, there…
Yesterday was Baylor Med’s first round of interviews for incoming medical students, so I naturally jumped on board to give basic science and clinical tours. Interviewing and giving said tours when I was an MS1/MS2 helped me “step away” from the classroom and remember what it felt like to be…