Last Thoughts on General Surgery

Two days later, I still feel like crap (stuffed nose, sore throat) but am enjoying my last day off before ortho begins. *sigh* The last four weeks have been hectic, but it could have been a lot worse. I never had to stay up all night with the interns (I always got at least 3-4 hrs a night) because RB and BR usually handled everything on their own. Had there only been one intern on the team (as was the case with other teams) then it might have been a different story. One interesting thing Manisha told me was that last year, there were two third years per surgery team instead of one, so they took turns going into surgeries (just like with obgyn). But with only one med student per team this year, my peers and I had to scrub in on all the surgeries with the chief or the junior, so we have it harder. I saw a grand total of 27 surgeries this month. The majority of them were lap choles and PEG insertions (of course), but the ones that stood out (fem-fem bypass, Heller myotomy) made it worthwhile.

Then of course there were the traumas that came in while I was on call. I knew the names of two victims (the AA woman who died on Friday and the woman killed in a murder-suicide on the 13th) so out of curiosity I googled their names to see what I could learn about them. The woman from the 13th, it turned out, was shot by her estranged husband near her apartment before he turned the gun on himself; apparently he had a history of being controlling and emotionally abusive. They left behind a young daughter who is now staying with her grandparents. The AA woman and her husband, as it turned out, were victims of a robbery. Police say three men forced their way into the apartment, demanded to know where money was kept, then shot her and her husband before leaving. One of those men was a known white supremacist, which was why people thought this was a hate crime at first. *sigh* At any rate, all three men have been arrested.

I hope ortho will be kinder to me.