Bye bye surgery!!!

Today was officially my last day for surgery at Coney Island. :) :) I am so happy to be done with this rotation. There are things I will miss, and things that I definitely won't miss. Overall, I thought the rotation was good. We did learn alot, and being a community hospital, we as students were allowed to do so many things (iv's, blood draws, NG tubes, sutures, I&Ds). I was fortunate to have some great residents (especially on call) that were willing to share their knowledge and teach. I was also exposed to some great attending who really care about surgery, their patients, and students. A word of advice for any future Coney Island surgery students: if you really want to learn and be a doer, then this is a great rotation. If you want to hang back and slack, then this is a great rotation too! Basically, its what you put into it!!

Now to recap the week: I was on call sunday night...my last one. I spent it with Scott because he had switched with Brian the week before. It was surprisingly uneventful. No trauma....no surgery....no major issues. Of course we did have one minor issue. A gentleman came in with an abscess near his anus. We had to incise and drain it. This was a major WOW on all fronts. First, he practically jumped off the table when the needle with lidocaine touched him. Then, when it was opened up and draining the stench was nasty....picture the distinct smell of infection laced with pooh. My nose was burning! Then, the inside of the abscess had to be swabbed to break up any loculations, and this poor guy was screaming and crying. Not just screaming, but whaling!!! The others in the ED must have thought he was giving birth or something. I felt really bad for him because you could just tell it was extremely painful.

This week I was in urology and wow did I quickly find out that the land of pee pee was not for me. By tuesday I wanted the week to be over with. I did get to see a few interesting surgeries: circumcision, revision of circumcision, cystoureteroscopy, stent placement, and laser stone removal (which interestingly looked like a game of asteroids on the screen). But overall I found urology to be boring and uneventful.

On wednesday, we had our oral presentations. We started at 8am and ended at 1pm. I asked to go first, just to get it over with. I did mine on Traumatic Aortic Injury. We had 12 minutes to present our topic (and we could not go over for risk of a penalty to our grade). Tuesday night I finished my slides and began to practice presenting when I quickly realized that my talk was well over 30 minutes long. So the process of editing began (good thing I never went into movies). I had trimmed so much out that I was afraid my topic would be boring. So, in order to put some interesting things back, I decided that talking really, really fast would be a good thing :0 Overall, my presentation went really, really well. Dr. L (our preceptor) really liked it and said I hit all of the important points within the allotted time.

Then on thursday, we had our exit interview with Dr. L. He had nothing but great things to say about me. Things like I was very knowledgeable, I used good judgement...I was really good with patients.....and that he thought very highly of me and expected great things. Those were all very nice things to hear, especially from someone who I really looked up to as being a great doctor, surgeon, and preceptor. I found out my written exam grade (the ridiculous SGU written exam which was more like an internal medicine exam than a surgery exam). I received an A, which really makes me think they curved the grades. I won't get my final surgery grade for a few weeks, but I'm hoping that I get an A overall.

Well, I start internal medicine on monday. This is where the real medicine is :) At least now I will have more of an idea as to all the things I don't know, or can't recall/remember from the first 2 years of medical school! This weekend I am just chilling out and relaxing. I may do something fun, but then again I may not. And having the choice is great!!! Everyone have a great night. I will fill you all in on my first day on Monday! :)