Where does the time go?
It's hard to believe that I am already halfway through my second semester of medical school. I wish I could say I've learned SO much since last fall, but that is not entirely accurate. It's more along the lines that I have learned and forgotten so much since the fall. It's the curse of a great short term memory but crappy long term memory - I can learn anything for a week, but whether I can remember it in a month is another story. And that must be genetic. Thanks mom.
Today I got to shadow a cardiothoracic surgeon - the Dr. Burke of my school's hospital. He was really nice, but I swear he looks and sounds almost exactly like Tim Allen, so it sort of felt like I was following an actor around. I kept waiting for a laugh track to go off everytime he cracked a joke, or the sound of a crowd going "awwwwwww" when he gave comforting words to a patient. A lot of today's shadowing involved sitting in the team room where all the residents and medical students hang out, looking at fancy lab tests on the computer. They were pretty bored so I guess they thought it would be fun to pimp the 1st year on medical knowledge - "What's this artery, newbie?" "What's the diameter of a normal aorta?" "What does this shiny white dot in the artery represent?" Yeah - I can't wait to experience that every day of rotations. One cool thing I got to see today was the surgeon removing fluid from the interpleural space of the patient's lungs. This guy was a marine and you could tell he could just barely hold it together, so I am guessing it doesn't feel too great. The doctor managed to get almost 2 liters of fluid out of there - talk about a quick way to lose weight!
Sorry for the paucity of posts. I will post more often and keep you guys updated!
Today I got to shadow a cardiothoracic surgeon - the Dr. Burke of my school's hospital. He was really nice, but I swear he looks and sounds almost exactly like Tim Allen, so it sort of felt like I was following an actor around. I kept waiting for a laugh track to go off everytime he cracked a joke, or the sound of a crowd going "awwwwwww" when he gave comforting words to a patient. A lot of today's shadowing involved sitting in the team room where all the residents and medical students hang out, looking at fancy lab tests on the computer. They were pretty bored so I guess they thought it would be fun to pimp the 1st year on medical knowledge - "What's this artery, newbie?" "What's the diameter of a normal aorta?" "What does this shiny white dot in the artery represent?" Yeah - I can't wait to experience that every day of rotations. One cool thing I got to see today was the surgeon removing fluid from the interpleural space of the patient's lungs. This guy was a marine and you could tell he could just barely hold it together, so I am guessing it doesn't feel too great. The doctor managed to get almost 2 liters of fluid out of there - talk about a quick way to lose weight!
Sorry for the paucity of posts. I will post more often and keep you guys updated!
posted by Katie Grouse at 4:16 PM
2 Comments:
paucity...good word
Dude, 2 liters of interpleural fluid? Yuck. How does one manage to have 2 liters of fluid sloshing around in that space? What kind of fluid? Major yuck. Glad to see you're posting again!
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