#7 Radiology - This was a two week rotation of pure boredom. Really. The hours were fantastic...started at 8 am and was done at 2 pm...but the work was ultra boring. In the morning I would go to the library and do the online PowerPoint presentations that taught how to read x-rays, MRI's and CT scans. These were very helpful and gave me a nice base to start from if I ever have to read my own film. But the afternoons were dreadfully boring as I sat in the dark reading room with the residents and watched them read and interpret the images. It was all digital of course...everything posted on the network. But for the very reason I did not go into computer programming would I not go into radiology- you just sit in front of a computer all day(though the pay is much better than computer programming) with hardly any social interaction. So even though I was an x-ray tech and wanted to do radiology before i went to med school, not anymore! Enough said.
#8 Anesthesiology - This was a fun rotation. I quickly learned about propofol(the drug that killed MJ-Michael Jackson) as it was used in nearly every surgery case we did. It's a great drug with a short half life and few side affects-and as long as you have control of the airway and are monitoring the vital signs no one should ever die because of it. MJ's doctor really did commit manslaughter in my opinion and should not be allowed to practice medicine. Anyway, I enjoyed practicing intubation and putting in LMA's, filling the syringes and administering the medications via IV, and doing the pre-surgery assessment with the patient. I enjoyed talking with the patients and helping ease their fears of surgery-because it can be scary- and found a lot of satisfaction in it. I would likely be heading into this field if it were not for my hearing. I just had a hard time hearing people in the OR with everyone wearing masks. Those rooms were not built with acoustics in mind. I didn't realize just how much I rely on reading lips to communicate. I think my overall satisfaction would be low because of this and may also be a patient safety issue.
#9 General Surgery - It was a very interesting and enlightening rotation and I am sure the experience will help me become a better physician...but I am not a surgeon. The most distressing part about general surgery was how plain rude and jerky the surgeons were. I noticed an interesting correlation between the year of residency the residents were in and the "niceness" of the resident. The older the resident was the more rude and arrogant they became. I didn't want that to become me and for that very reason I will stay away from surgery. But some of the highlights of the rotation were being allowed to scrub into the surgeries and being right there at the table. My job was mostly to cut sutures and hold retractors while the surgeons did their work and also "pimped" us on the general anatomy and other random questions about the surgery. Occasionally they would let me put in a suture or two but usually everybody wanted to go home and didn't want to wait for the slow med student to suture the patient up, so those opportunities were few and far between. I actually got lucky for 2 of the 4 weeks and worked on a vascular surgery team. These guys were so much nicer than the general surgeons and I actually enjoyed going to work on that service. I saw a lot of AV fistulas built for dialysis patients and also saw the magnificent work of Dr. Brightwell as he carefully sewed together the smallest of blood vessels! Really, it was pretty amazing to watch. The senior resident was named Altin and he had migrated from Albania by himself at age 16. He was a remarkable story of the true American dream of coming from having literally nothing to being just a few years away from becoming an American trained surgeon. Quite an accomplishment! My hours were dreadfully long, usually starting at 5:30 am and sometimes not leaving the hospital until after 8 pm. And then I had to go home and read about the next days surgeries so I wouldn't look like a complete idiot(although I usually did anyway ;) ). So in nutshell, surgery is not for me.
#10 Psychiatry - Wow. This was a very interesting and crazy rotation. And I only did outpatient. I'm sure if I worked in a mental hospital, it would've been even more crazy. To sum up the majority of patients, I would say most were just sad, sad stories of people who either got themselves in bad or stressful situations or a family member put themselves in a bad or stressful situation, and the patient could not handle the stress and had a breakdown. Then they were given the diagnosis of bipolar, or schizophrenic or depression and forever after have lived believing they were messed up. Now, don't get me wrong, I truly believe there are psychiatric disorders. It just seems like most were started from a single stressor or a multitude of stressors that acted like a trigger button to turn on the illness. I wonder if these people had had better tools to handle stress, if they would be in the same place with the same diagnoses they are in today? A lot of the illnesses have a genetic pattern to them and some even have neurotransmitter and chemical imbalances in the brain. I find Psychology fascinating and the hours worked really wouldn't be too bad. But I just don't think I could handle hearing sad story after sad story, day in and day out, without diagnosing myself with some psychiatric disorder before long! ;) The most bizarre story I witnessed came from an 11 year old boy who was there to see the child psychiatrist. When asked why he was there by the physician, he replied "I play with my feces!" Gross. I wanted to stop there, but of course we had to get to the bottom of this. He was a very articulate and intelligent kid who probably had a larger vocabulary than most adults. That's what made the case so interesting. If he were mentally handicapped it wouldn't have been so unusual. So we probed further and discovered he felt bad for his actions but for some unknown reason even he couldn't explain, he would use his feces to write on the wall or hide it under the couch cushions or other obscure places. I won't bore you with the rest of the details but we finally concluded he was experiencing psychosis and maybe some childhood depression. It was a weird case. So anyway, in case you were wondering...psychiatry is not for me.
#11 International Health - South Africa! Yes, I spent an entire month in South Africa working in the government hospital in Polokwane, Limpopo, South Africa! This rotation deserves an entire blog post with pictures. And I will try to post it in a reasonable time frame.
#12 Physical Medicine and Rehab - This was a 2 week rotation and also deserves a separate blog post since it currently has the lead for my specialty of choice and is also a field that not many people outside of medicine know much about. I really enjoyed it....and wished I preferred to work in PM & R over watching a football game or recreating...but I just don't think that specialty is out there for me.
In other exciting news, we had quite a few visitors come stay with us this semester:
Lichelle came and spent a night with us toward the end of her whirlwind tour of the Eastern U.S. in April before I left to S.A., and we had a blast taking her to the Columbus sights and talking till late! It was so fun to see someone in our apartment from home and we loved having her fun presence here! We even saw Trent an hour before he flew back to Utah and I got to show him the "Horseshoe" Ohio State's football stadium. Thanks for coming guys and feel free to visit again, we would love it!
Mark and Gina, aka Dad and Mom, paid homage to our Columbus abode toward the end of April while I was in S.A. and spent a couple of days with Makenna. She was a good tour guide I heard and showed Mom and Dad the Columbus sights, my old apartment, the hospitals where I've worked and even the capitol building. I was grateful they could make it out and spend some time with Mak while I was gone. Thanks guys for coming and taking care of my wife! Please come again when I am around! :)
Hillary(Mak's sister) was our next visitor and she came for a week in May while I was still in S.A. I heard they got good quality sister time, you know, the shopping galore, staying up late watching their favorite t.v. shows and eating frozen yogurt. I'm sure Mak was glad I wasn't around for that week! ;) Thanks for coming Hill and do come again when I'm around, it would be fun!
We then were thrilled to receive a visit from my sister Emily. She stayed with us for four day and 1/2 days on her tour to see her prison enslaved and shackled..er...her medical school attending brothers. :) She arrived the week after I returned from S.A. We enjoyed touring Columbus with her and hearing at night after Mak and I got of work about her adventures of exploring the city alone. Don't worry Ems, my blinker was not stolen by the psychotic types you accidentally parked my car next to! ;) We enjoyed playing games at night, eating Ethiopian food, hearing about the possible ways we could die wherever we went with you, and chatting! Thanks for visiting and we hope to see you again out here!
Our last visitor was Makenna's twin sister Madi. Ok, they really aren't twins, but they sure look an awful lot alike. She flew home with us after our short trip to Utah(which also deserves a blogpost...but suffice to say we loved seeing everybody we got to see during our short time there and love you all!). She spent an entire week with us. She would stay up really late, sleep in till late and work on her quilt and giraffe craft until Mak and I got home. Again we enjoyed touring the city with her and I enjoyed a nice waffle house lunch with her. Mak took her shopping and had some good sister time while I studied. It was fun to have someone come home with us and felt like we had a longer vacation than our short stay in UT. She got a unique experience, one she may never forget. Makenna's "Black Beauty" Kia sorrento broke down as we were traveling home from Cedar Point(the amusement park)at 11 pm, completely and utterly dying in the middle of nowhere Attica, Ohio. Luckily we have emergency roadside assistance through American family insurance, and after one call to them, they took care of us. We had the car towed to our apartment in Galloway, 94 miles away, and didn't arrive home until 4 am. We're hoping to get the car fixed this week and hope our checkbook can absorb the blow. On the bright side, Mak and I have gotten to spend more time together as I've been taking her to work and picking her up and i've enjoyed it. Anyway we were happy to have Madi along for the ride and glad she came to visit! Please come again, we sure had fun!
We loved all our visitors and hope to have many more! OK, I'm almost caught up...just a few more blog posts and I'll be there. Although this was a long post, it's pretty darn short for the amount of ground we covered. Thanks for sticking with it and look for my African post in the future.
3 comments:
Greet job, I love reading your experiences, I glad your writting these down.
Loved the update. I always look forward to reading about your rotations. Thanks for posting. I had a blast being there back in April and wish I could have stayed longer. LOVE YOU!
Sean - I'll add my voice to the others. It's been very interesting reading about your rotations. Keep it up!
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