Amazing and exhausting

So i know that i have not posted anything new in a long time. I am sorry about that, my surgery rotation is two rotations in one, trauma surgery and gen surgery. My hours are long, and exhausting, i have been averaging about 120 hours a week, and LOVE IT!!! i never thought i would ever say that working a 36 hour shift is actually something i enjoy, but as long as we are busy, its fast, interesting and strange enough fun....so i am starting to think i have a future in surgery, esp because i dont drink coffee (except for one cup in the morning around 5am) and i am able to stay awake and energized for the entire shift until i get home and sit down...then its GAME OVER!

here is how a normal day runs....
-get to hospital by 5am, see patients (either on the floors or in the ICU) write notes, check labs/imaging, exam the patient.
- 7:30am walking rounds
- 9am-2pm surgeries/ scut work/ procedures
-2pm sign out rounds to the on call people
- 3:30 till you finish scut work, post op notes, procedures---then you can go home, unless you are on call.

there are also days were we have morning lec from 7am-8am, sit down rounds 2x week 8-9 followed by walking rounds, we also have noon lecture 2x week, and clinic hours 3x wk from 10-1pm

for the on-call days we are able to go home after we finish rounding the following day. For example, if you are on-call wed, then you get to the hosp at 5am wed and will go home when we finish walking rounds on thursday, roughly 12...

my usually schedule resembles the daily habits of a newborn. I eat, sleep, work, poop, repeat.

i will get home take a nap for a few hours, wake up to read/study, eat dinner, shower, bedtime is usually around 9pm sometimes earlier. Then i repeat. Since i basically work 7days a week, all of my spare time is spent sleeping, doing laundry or trying to study.

Luckily for me, i have done well during my first month, made a good impression with the attending's and have been made chief medical student for my second month. This is a HUGE DEAL!! besides the obvious, good recommendation, more experience.....i am the one who makes the call schedule! so next month i will not be working every single weekend, and unlike this month where there were multiple occasions when my schedule had been q2 (every other day i am on call) next month i have a total of 6 calls, and work only 1 weekend. Ah the perks of leadership....


I have been meaning to post for weeks, since there are a lot of interesting cases/ stories that occur when you work trauma call/gen sx....here are some highlights of the cases

- psych patient who put a drill in his ass
- psych patient who liked to unhook his colostomy and play with his poop
- too many MCC's to count (MCC = motorcycle collision), if i have learned nothing else on this rotation, i have learned never to ride a motorcycle, and even helmets dont help that much!
- road rash of the scrotum
- man with metal nut around his penis (came to ER after been there for 2 days)
- man who worked construction, and fell 30ft after cutting a hole around himself...yep its as ridiculous as it sounds, we think about it like a cartoon. The only regret the pt has is 'maybe i should not have gone to work after drinking'
- the bigger the man the more they cry
- sometimes when you fall and hit your head and you think its nothing 2 days later you can be dead..... we had a lady who fell off a chair trying to get a lizard out of her house, and now she is going to die from a major bleed in her head that we cannot stop.
- stupidity keeps trauma surgeons in business, so thats good news!
- if you shoot yourself in the head with a .40caliber weapon, there is no reason to bring the body in via ambulance. you are going to be declared dead.
- regardless of injury two things can be certain if you come in via trauma alert - you will get a Foley and a rectal exam (and it will be done by a student!)

Funny story about the first Foley Catheter i tried to put in....the chief of surgery is running the trauma and tells me to put the Foley in, so i am trying, and all of sudden i hear..."Markle! you have to choke it, like you own it!" i will admit this is probably the best advice anyone can be given in the trauma bay. esp since i have not missed a Foley since then.

Other words of wisdom.....
-never break up a fight! if you need to just spray the people with a hose. We have a kid (17yr) who broke up a fight between 2 people at a party and ended up getting shot, and now is paralyzed from the waist down.
- Do not sleep with a married woman. Another pt we have decided to have an affair with a married woman, while having sex, the husband came home (in florida its legal to carry a concealed weapon), the husband shot the wife 3x in the chest, and shot the man in the ass. I am glad because it ended up perforating the rectum and we got to operate that night, but the man got a colostomy and had a lot of explaining to do when his wife and daughter came to visit him in the ICU
- dont ride a scooter. We have a pt who was hit by a car while on a scooter with no helmet (he was the passenger), they removed half his skull and part of his brain and now is in a vegetative state.
- Ritalin has multiple uses. We use Ritalin in head injuries, and i have seen patients that seem to be in a vegetative state start to wake up thanks to Ritalin. Its pretty amazing, so i am thinking about writing a research proposal about the use in the trauma patient to help stimulate brain function. Its pretty interesting.

I have learned a lot and seen a lot, and there are tons of stories, some from the patients and some more from the hilarious moments in the OR...the surgeons i am working with are awesome and keep the laughter a constant fixture. It helps since we see patients die on a near daily basis.

well its getting to bedtime, almost 9pm....so i need to get some sleep so i can wake up and do this all again tomorrow. I am going to try and post more in the next few weeks when i actually get a day off to sleep in, ie wake up at 7am and work out (thats a 3 hour sleep in!!! ) i never thought waking up at 7 is like a vacation...Similar to how i feel when i finally get to work a 40hr work week, its going to feel like i am on vacation/bored....