Ortho Clinic

Today I spent the entire day with Dr. T at the Ortho clinic. There were several changes at the clinic this morning. Delip and Amy were gone, replaced by two brand new A&M guys, Dylan and Vu. We learned to put splints on our arms, which was a lot of fun. After that, I followed Dr. T from room to room until noon. A lot of kids were coming in with broken bones, splints, or scoliosis. Dr. T rarely spent more than 5 min with each patient. But no matter how short a time he was there, his manner was always kind and gentle. He shook hands with everyone in the room, always asked the kids if they were okay when he was examining their injured limbs, etc. Definitely made a good impression on everyone he met. One case stood out among the others: a 17 year old girl about to start her senior year came to the office with a history of scoliosis. Five years ago, her pediatrician told her that her scoliosis was mild, nothing to worry about. Today, the angle of her scoliosis was nearly 50 degrees, far too great to be treated with braces (not to mention braces only work in growing children). Surgery is her only option. Dr. T was willing to wait until after she graduates from high school before doing the surgery, but when he started naming the risks of surgery (including paralysis), she broke down and started to cry. Her parents were left wondering if all this could have been avoided if they'd only gotten a second opinion from the pediatrician all those years ago, but it's too late. She has so much to live for, and after the surgery, she'll have a long scar on her back. No one wants that, either.

Dr. W gave us a shelf exam review during lunch that was pretty helpful; maybe it'll motivate me to study harder. Later I met Jen and Sapna for dinner, and boy, did I get an earful. There's been a lot of drama going on in the surgery department at Christus Spohn, most of it consisting of Heather B and maybe Mike E complaining about how they don't get to do enough procedures and basically griping about the way med students are treated at Spohn in general. According to Jen, not only did Heather try to put others down (even going so far as to question why a 4th year got to do more procedures than she did), she was continually butting heads with the attendings. Dr. D and Dr. B came down to Corpus today to talk to the Corpus crew about their thoughts on what was going on, but since Heather was the only one who had complaints (even going so far as to write to Dr. D), she was asked to finish the rest of her rotation in FW. It got even better when Dr. D even said he'd expected something like this to happen, possibly due to the way Heather behaved during post-exam reviews (questioning the profs' answers and all). Now that is pretty bad. We are not in high school anymore; it is not cool to step on your fellow med students and make them look bad, when all the while you're making yourself look bad.