random thoughts

"SURGERY INTERN!"

And I am transported to a room filled with beeping sounds, the smell of a gangrenous foot, mixed with dried blood and sweat, and harsh white lights.  Duty again with Tiger and Al… the three of us have been duty-mates for a week as surgery interns… Move over Meredith Gray.. Here comes Monica Jara.  Unlike my American counterpart however, I am a newbie at this, inexperienced.. and admittedly i have to read up.

7 am (5/20/06) The two are not yet here.. Shar and Annie have just endorsed their patients in the ER.. Asan na ba ang boys? But what the two girls failed to endorse was that they had a drunk patient with a 15 cm laceration from his right forehead to his temporoparietal area covered in bandage.. Dr. Berces tells me "ok you can suture na.. you have the entire morning." So what should have started as a benign morning in my ER duty became an encounter with 3 drunk men. Poor helpless me! But somebody has to do it. We don’t have clerk (4th year med students) rotators yet.. just the 3 of us.

"Nurse, nurse.. ikaw magtatahi sa akin?" oh no! i don’t like dealing with drunk people in the ER.. They’re noisy, loud and really don’t give a damn about what they say.. "Hindi po sya nurse, doktora po yan.", Tiger says.

I proceeded to shave his head (as hair would most likely become a focus of infection) and the shiny periosteum started peeking from his scalp.. shet ang laki. i had to suture half of his head! "Doktora, hihimatayin na ata ako!" This burly looking guy told me… hehehe.. "relax lang kayo diyan sir." Even if blood started to drip into his shirt.

I noticed it really takes me a long time to suture.. I want every bite to look  aesthetically pleasing. Im a bit OC about the spacing in between the sutures.  Dr Berces said, "wow pang-plastic surgery!" then started to laugh.. But what I like about my SOD(Surgeon on Duty) is that he always gives me constructive criticism and dishes out praise all the time.. "You’re doing good.." Positive reinforcement.. He helped me excise my first lipoma in the Minor OR. He helped me gain confidence in placing IV lines in the trauma patients.

10 pm Being an intern, nakakahiya kasi my former blockmates keep on teasing me that I’m like an ICC(a 3rd year medical student) because I’m slow at lining… Give me NGTs, foley catheters, blood extractions! But there’s something about IV catheterization that makes me feel queasy. So last night, I conquered my fear and attended to the gunshot wound and multiple stab wound patients. My SOD remarked, most improved intern. hehehe

i was cursing the other day because i will be assigned as a trauma intern in 3 weeks time.. malas ko nga naman! not everybody rotates there and it is common knowledge that it is the MOST TOXIC part of the surgery rotation.

But somehow, the sight of blood and lacerated skin didn’t scare me last night. I was feeling a surge of adrenaline during my duty. My body was tired. My feet was killing me. The soles bearing all the pressure and all the blood pooling in my gastrocnemius muscles.  I even developed leg cramps at some point after we attended to our patients.

But I was happy. I was even singing in between blood extractions. iba pag ok ka-duty mo! we’re doing ok kasi walang scum sa duty namin. it helps if the residents are ma-chika and patawa. Even if you have a toxic rotation you don’t feel toxic.

Tomorrow, I’ll be charting in the outpatient department. more patients.. at least 120 a day divided by the 4 of us. but im enjoying my surgery rotation so far.

Before thinking of going into a dermatology program, only my closest friends knew I dreamt before of going into plastic surgery.. before liposuction, and other procedures of self-enhancement became commonplace. we’ll see.. i have a long way to go. Dermatologic surgery is still my dream. pero malayo pa yun.. one rotation down, one day at a time. i am a bit ambitious, if not a tad bit idealistic.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 20th, 2006 at 7:40 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.