What is this "responsibility" you speak of?

Haha, the title of this post pretty much only applies for like the next two weeks... and not even really then... of course I'm not technically working or doing anything like that right now, but I AM moving, and I DO have to make sure that I'm ready for school to start on August 11th, and 9am, with Neurology. Not that I've studied the schedule or anything...

So, anyway, I'm pretty much just trying to get ready for vacation in Canada, while at the same time move out of my current apartment into my new house.

Anyway, that's about all that I've got to say right now, but I should probably make clear that I did not take the pictures in last week's post... I am not in violation of HIPAA as far as I know, I just got them off the internet...

BABIES!!!

Yep, that's really the only title that I could give this... Today I spent another day in obstetrics (I was there Monday too, but I was in ENT yesterday). I guess the whole point of that field is babies, so... you might expect to be doing something related to babies. And, surprise, surprise, there were, in fact, babies. All over the place.
What am I talking about?, you ask? Well, today I saw part of a regular delivery (the good old-fashioned vaginal kind), and I scrubbed in on like 3 Cesarean sections (I know you know what that is, I just REALLY like wikipedia...). Which was pretty crazy, if you ask me. So, I actually got to do some stuff, like hold retractors, and staple things (like skin) back together, which was cool. But also, it was really cool because after you're done, there's a baby there! Which I think we can all agree is pretty awesome.

In a side-note, it dawned on me today that a during a C-section (yep, more links...), a uterus looks a lot like Admiral Ackbar from Star Wars.


Admiral Ackbar


Uterus during C-section

Anyway, that was pretty much the whole day... Tomorrow I'm in Pediatrics, which could be interesting... and again on Friday, and then Friday is the last day of this program!!! Where did the summer go? I can't believe that it's really almost over... Of course, I still have fishing in Canada to look forward to... And then we start classes on August 11th, bright and early.

Actually its at 9am. Which isn't really that early. But it's still lecture. :(

And no BABIES!

The Last Week

I know that this summer has been the proverbial "calm before the storm", and I have been enjoying what I've been doing, but I am happy announce that this week will be my last in the hospital medical education program. I am sure that within a week of classes starting I will be begging to go back to it, but at this point I am ready for a change from just observing things.

Right now, I'm mostly looking forward to a couple weeks of hanging out, moving across town, and going to Canada before school starts up again...


I don't have too much to say (maybe that's why I haven't written anything on here for a few weeks), so without further ado, I will bid you "adieu"...

The Emergency Department

Well, I've been spending the last several days in the emergency room... sometimes it has been exciting, sometimes less exciting, and sometimes not exciting at all. There were a few things that happened that I would have liked to do more of, and then there were some other things I would like to avoid forever if possible (some people...). Anyway, I have gotten to see some pretty interesting cases, and gotten to get a feel for what it could be like to work in ER, so I would say that it has been a good week.

I guess maybe I could see myself doing ER... its hard to know for sure, because my role right now is kind of limited. I mean, I can go in and find out why somebody came in, and (if I do say so) can get a pretty good history and (my version of a) physical, and I can find out pretty much all of their symptoms and everything. My problem right now is, I haven't quite learned all the minutiae of all the different diseases and what to do for what kind of infections and stuff like that. So, its hard to know if I would like doing the ER, because there's just a lot of information that I haven't quite gotten around to memorizing yet (but just wait, it's coming).

Another Thursday

Well, since it has been a week since I last wrote in here, I feel that I should spend just a couple of minutes and quickly tell you all about it. This week, in the mornings, I have been with the "staff medicine" residents in the hospital, meaning, the residents that have to go thru and take care of all different patients in the hospital that have all different kinds of problems. That has been pretty interesting... I won't actually tell them, but let's just say I've got a couple of stories about Fournier's Gangrene (if you've got a strong stomach, go a head and Google that one... ...I'm not gonna link you to an article though) that might give you nightmares. Then, in the afternoons, I have been spending some time in the family practice clinic across from the main hospital, again, mostly just with residents.

I hadn't really spent too much time with residents until this week. It has made me think a little bit; its a kind of crazy to think that in about 3 years, I'll be doing my own residency (as long as everything goes as planned--I had a dream last night that someting happened and I had to take a year off for some reason...). Of course I've got plenty to learn before then, but it is pretty cool to know that as far as the whole "8 years of college" goes, I'm more than halfway done.

Anyway, I've got one more day of what I've been doing this week, and next week, I'll be in the emergency department, which means, I'll probably be seeing some emergent cases.

I love summer...

Today began normal enough. I went in to the hospital at 9am (not super early, but there wasn't any reason to go in earlier). I finally scrubbed in on one of this orthopod's (that's what you call orthopedic surgeons) surgeries. So that was pretty cool, which in laymen's terms means, I basically just held things, applied pressure and held a guy's leg in different positions while the surgeon debrided his necrosed calf, and loved every minute of it... I'm not sure if that's completely normal. Anyway, after that, Dr. Orthopod didn't have any more cases for the day, just some meetings, which he said would be "extremely boring", and advised me to go do some "independent study" for the rest of the day. Which was advice that I took to heart.

Now, I've been thinking about going up there since I moved to South Bend, so it's not completely random, but after I got done in the hospital at about 12:30pm, I decided I would take a trip up to the Indiana Dunes. So I did. (I love summer, it's awesome!) I went to the Indiana Dunes National Lakshore, which is actually a national park, and is only about 50 or 60 miles from where I live. So I drove up there, and hiked around for awhile. Pretty much, the rest of this post is going to be me going thru some pictures that I took up there, so get excited!

The first thing I did was get a map of the place. I went to the visitor's center, and talked to this lady that worked there for awhile (it was kind of weird, not gonna lie, I think she thought I was like 15), and got a map. Then I went to the biggest sand dune they have there.

It's kind of hard to take a picture of a sand dune, but that's it. The biggest one they've got. So I walked around there for a little while, checked things out, and what have you. Then I got a little bored with that, and decided I needed to do some actual hiking, and went down the road to another place.

At the other place, there was an actual trail, and you had to hike about 2 miles or something, through a bog, and some sand dunes and stuff to get to the shore of Lake Michigan. So I did that. Actually it took a long time because I was taking all of these pictures. Also, I didn't really see anyone else there. Which was cool, and I got to pretend that I was out in "the wilderness". (Actually I watched that movie "Into the Wild" a few weeks ago, and I kept thinking about that...) Anyway, here's the picture tour...

I found a pretty sweet trail...

And I thought it was going to keep going...

But then it didn't. It ended in this:

Which I thought wasn't something I wanted to walk through, and so I turned back onto the main trail.

Actually, at this point, I'm going to give you another one of those neat slide-shows to look at the rest of the pictures I want to show. They're just the rest of my hike out to the lake.



So, all in all, it was a pretty good day. I enjoyed what I did in the morning, and I also enjoyed the "independent study" that I did in the afternoon. What more can you really ask for?

(BTW, the slide show is in AJAX, meaning "asynchronous JavaScript and XML", which may help to know if its not coming up. I recommend the latest release of Firefox 3.0--RC 2 or something like that--because that's what I use and everything comes up!)

The Dentist

Yesterday and today (and actually all week) I spent watching an orthopedic trauma surgeon. Today, I went to his office in the morning, saw a bunch of patients with him (people with things ranging from broken arms to an aputated leg), and in the afternoon, I watched a surgical procedure called a balloon kyphoplasty. I guess its a pretty good fix for compression fractures of the spine caused by osteoporosis. It was actually a really short procedure.

After I left the hospital, I had to go to the dentist for a filling. My appointment was for 4:15 (that gets important later on). So I got there on time. Of course they brought me back and out me in the chair pretty quickly. Then the dentist came in and told me I would need numbed up. So he gave me a shot of lidocaine. Anyway, that went well until about a minute after he put it in, and then I started getting a little dizzy, and got real nervous all of a sudden. Anyway, I said something to the dentist about it, and he told me that he had put the shot too close to the nerve. Later on he told me that he had put it straight into my artery, so it went straight into my blood, and into the ol' noggin. So they had me sit there for awhile while it kind of wore off. Meanwhile, somebody had some kind of dental emergency (so I'm told), because the dentist was gone for about an hour and a half while I waited in the chair for my filling. By the time he got back, not only was I totally "sobered up" from the medicine, but my mouth was also no longer numb. So he had to give ANOTHER shot. Actually it was good though, because even with being pretty numb, it still hurt quite a bit. Anyway, but the time I got out of the dentist's office, it was about 6:40.