2 down, 4 more to go

5 days of sleep depravation, and week 2 of surgery rotation is over. Remember when I said that most of the residents in surg are douches, at the beginning of this week, I thought, yea...that's about right. Today, however, proved to be the exception to the rule. The chief resident, who was supposed to be gunning for me, turns out to be not so bad...he can joke around, despite being blunt most of the time. He even took a little bit of time to teach us something today after a colostomy reversal case. On the flip side, one of the 4th year residents, who I thought was really nice, was somewhat feisty today...perhaps because she's on call tonight and there's supposed to be this huge blizzard coming to our area that's gonna snow trap us all by tomorrow. Anyhoo, I was getting a history on a new ER admit, and I wrote down something stupid that the patient said (I'd rather not repeat it...it was too embarassing, and it was something I knew was a medical impossibility, yet I continued to document, none the less). Well, I certainly looked dumb when I mentioned it to my resident, for which she scolded me for it...I deserved it I suppose. But then she smacked me in the arm...something I don't think higher ups do to their subordinates, unless they were totally being familiar. And I'm not sure if she was trying to go for that effect to make me feel better. So I felt bad, then I got confused...which is not a good combination to go with sleep deprivation. Luckily, there was more work to be done and less time being a dolt.

BTW. New pet peeve: poor medical historians. Cantstandya!

So, by 6pm, we gave our reports, said our goodbyes, and changed out of our scrubs. Wouldn't you know it, the Scrub dispenser machine decides to get snippy with me and takes my scrubs without giving me back my credit (FYI scrub machines only give you new scrubs if you have credit, and you only get credit if you give back your used scrubs). So I was stuck in the locker room for another hour, waiting for housekeeping to give me a new pair to load, so I can get credit back. On the bright side, I used that time practicing one-handed surgical ties. Finally, with my scrub credit replenished, I head out to the call room to retrieve the rest of my effects. I round the corner and all of the sudden, the 2nd year surgical resident pops out of hiding, screaming bloody murder. I nearly poop my pants in fright and he's rolling on the floor laughing his brains out. He got me good...
So, overall, a fun-loving bunch. They definitely have their bad sides, but this week, they were human beings. Fairly nice ones, I might say.

Since I haven't kept up with this week's daily blogging, I'm opting to list the surgical procedures I saw this week:
1. Laparoscopic appendectomy
2. Femoral-to-popliteal artery graft bypass
3. Hemicolectomy + Hartmann's procedure
4. Groin abscess incision and drainage
5. Reverse Colostomy (sigmoid-rectum end-to-end anastamosis)
6. Laparoscopic Roux-en-Y gastric bypass

Next week, Anesthesiology. Should be interesting.

P.S. For those who are keeping score, I never did give the thyroid CA presentation, but I did learn a lot from the readings.

Song of the day: "Heaven When We're Home" - The Wailin' Jennys