bring it on, neurosurgery

January 8, 2006 at 11:54 am | Posted in neurosurgery | 1 Comment

My first true 30 hour call day. And it wasn’t too bad, except between 1am and 3am, and again between 8am and 10am. After that, my second wind set in, and I probably could have stayed another 6 hours or so without deteriorating into a pool of protoplasm. Once that 6 hours was up, though, all bets would have been off.

Thursday and Friday were difficult days for me. Nothing seemed to be going well between me and the residents on the service, and I thought I’d be condemned to spectatorship for the entire two weeks of my county hospital rotation. But my call day on Saturday was a whole different experience. I can’t even really remember the beginning of it–it seems like weeks ago. But there was a whole lot of nothing going on for hours on end, and then suddenly around 2pm it was one surgery after another till the following morning. I got to drill some holes in a couple of heads, which although a relatively idiot-proof procedure, was still pretty cool. And, most importantly, I discovered that I too can build sufficient muscle strength to do most of this stuff. Even over the last week, I’ve felt myself getting stronger, and more able to lift things and drill things, and position patients with less assistance. I still need a lot of help, but I can tell that with practice and training, I can do what I need to be able to do. And also, as you develop more technical finesse, the need for brute strength decreases.

In the small world category, back when I was a staff pharmacist at Methodist, I’d actually had to call the resident who’s now chief resident on neurosurgery about some medication order that had been written on a patient in my ICU. he was an intern at the time, and if I recall correctly, it was one of those situations where it was impossible to get hold of anyone who would admit to having any responsibility for the patient in question, and for whatever reason, I ended up calling him about it, and I think he went ahead and OK’d whatever it was. The only reason I even remember is because of the unique name, which I’d asked him to spell. (That’s the trick I use whenever I space out while someone’s telling me their name. Which happens embarrassingly often.) I also remember because whatever the specific circumstances were, I was expecting him to be short with me and angry at having been called, and instead he was genuinely nice. Which is just how he is with everyone, even 6 years later after almost an entire neurosurgery residency. And that’s how I’d like to be at the end of my residency as well.

In any event, it ended up being a good week, despite being somewhat shaky in the middle.