Vacation

My latest month in purgatory is over, and now I am on vacation relaxing with my family and friends in California. You know you are back in Los Angeles when you go out to dinner with your amigos and sitting at the table next to you is a movie star comedian (David Spade) and a harem of beautiful women. If you are out to dinner in Salt Lake City and encounter a harem, it usually means something entirely different if you know what I mean. Anyway, all jokes aside, it is great to be back in California with some time off to get my mind clear and rest my weary bones.

I was on call Friday night and had 6 surgical consults within an hour. I don't know why this stuff always has to happen at midnight! One dude had a dead pancreas, the next guy had an incarcerated umbilical hernia that the ER doc couldn't reduce, the next fellow had a pseudo-obstruction of his large intestine after surgery on his hip, the next gentleman had dead bowel sitting in his belly secondary to an internal hernia, the next woman had a tumor obstructing the third portion of her duodenum, and the final contestant was a medical student who was 2 days away from taking the most important exam of her career and had the bad luck of coming down with acute appendicitis. As you can tell, the night was busy and included two trips to the operating room. At 3 AM, I clumsily maneuvered tools inside the girls' belly as I watched my efforts on a tv monitor. I don't get in the operating room enough to actually improve, so it can be very frustrating to be handed an instrument and told to operate.

Another fun story from this month took place a couple weeks ago while I was driving home from the hospital. I was minding my own business and happened to look off to the side and see a man on a bike down on the ground with a car next to him and people standing over him. My first impulse was to speed up, but then I remembered the oath I took, so I flipped a U-turn and pulled up next to the scene of the accident. I jumped out wearing my scrubs and surveyed the situation. The man on the ground was talking coherently and did not have any gross deformities. There was another man squatting next to him wearing latex gloves and barking out orders. When he saw me, he said "I used to be a paramedic, I have this under control." I wanted to say "Well don't mind me, I'm just a surgery resident." Instead, I quickly assessed the spread-eagled asian man on the bike and then stood back and watched. All of the sudden, a bearded man wearing parachute pants and white reebok hightops came running up and exclaimed "I'm a doctor!" He proceeded to say a few words to the spread-eagled asian man on the bike, checked his pulse, and then ran off as quickly as he appeared. It was quite surreal. Once the real paramedics came, I retreated to my car and drove away. My contribution to the incident was repeatedly yelling at the spread-eagled asian man on the bike not to move his neck.

So here I am back in Cali. I have been a doc now for three months. I feel good about the progress I have made, but there is so much more for me to learn. It is funny that my specialty involves the ears, nose, throat, and related structures in the head and neck, but I spend most of my time worrying about the bowel. I guess I am learning about how to take care of "the surgical patient." I will let you know in due time how relevant this year of general surgery is to my eventual specialty.