I had a tiring but amazing morning yesterday. For the first time, I got to witness and assist in a spine surgery. =) The patient was a 14-year old girl who had scoliosis with a 50-degree curve on her spine. Now I know exactly how scoliosis is corrected with the use of screws and rods and most importantly, bone grafts. We stood for nearly 6 hours in the OR (they say scolio cases typically last about 10 hours or more)! And while I kept silent the whole time, in my head I couldn't stop marveling at the way God created the human body, and the knowledge He gave man to be able to come up with ways to "fix" whatever is wrong (like what we did yesterday). It was just so cool. =)
I didn't like the afternoon part of my duty though. I was up for my second procedure for the day--it was supposed to be just a simple closed reduction for a dislocated elbow of an 18-year old guy who encountered a motorcycle crash. The problem was, he also had a big bleed in his brain from the head trauma and putting him under anesthesia for the closed reduction would be tricky. After some delay the neurosurgeon evaluated him and decided to do a craniectomy. We had to wait for the patient to be anesthesized before we could reduce his dislocation, and that took us hours. Argh. Five hours of doing nothing until I got tired and hungry. I was there from 3 til 8pm! Then my resident let my go down to the call room and have dinner for a while, for which I took my time. I came back after about 40 mins (I think) and behold, the patient's elbow was fixed alreay. Oookay...so much for waiting that long. I spent the rest of the night tinkering with my new laptop [wee...=) too bad the Ortho Wifi was down though], trying to drown out the ghost stories the residents were sharing. Hahaha. And then I slept from 12-6:45 am. :)
It was still a fun duty, in spite of the hassles.
Clerkship is winding down! One more week left... :)
I didn't like the afternoon part of my duty though. I was up for my second procedure for the day--it was supposed to be just a simple closed reduction for a dislocated elbow of an 18-year old guy who encountered a motorcycle crash. The problem was, he also had a big bleed in his brain from the head trauma and putting him under anesthesia for the closed reduction would be tricky. After some delay the neurosurgeon evaluated him and decided to do a craniectomy. We had to wait for the patient to be anesthesized before we could reduce his dislocation, and that took us hours. Argh. Five hours of doing nothing until I got tired and hungry. I was there from 3 til 8pm! Then my resident let my go down to the call room and have dinner for a while, for which I took my time. I came back after about 40 mins (I think) and behold, the patient's elbow was fixed alreay. Oookay...so much for waiting that long. I spent the rest of the night tinkering with my new laptop [wee...=) too bad the Ortho Wifi was down though], trying to drown out the ghost stories the residents were sharing. Hahaha. And then I slept from 12-6:45 am. :)
It was still a fun duty, in spite of the hassles.
Clerkship is winding down! One more week left... :)
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