footless

so i think i'm closer to finding my calling in life. i'm just finishing my surgery rotation and it was amazing! i love being in the or, and the scrub techs have finally stopped yelling at me for not being sterile enough. the things that surgeons do are fun. it's like fixing things all day or playing carnival games. both of which i like doing.

before i was thinking of ortho, but now i'm leaning more towards general surgery. ortho is too specialized. i like also having to deal with medicine and how the body works in addition to just cutting. and that's all part of taking care of the patients before and after surgery in gen surg. don't know which specific field of gen surg i want to go into, but i'll leave that for another day.

i do know i don't want to do amputations!

i went in on 2 amputations during my rotation. one of them was a below the knee amputation (bka) and the other was a toe amputation. and i was seriously grossed out by both of them. the bka was much more brutal than i thought it was going to be. i thought they were going to dissect out the muscles and nerves and be careful about big arteries, etc. nope. they just cut right through everything, snapped one leg bone and bone sawed the other one. done and done. dropping the "specimen" in the biohazard bag and carrying it around did not help matters either =P

the toe amputation was really really gross. the patient's foot was infected with a bad bug and the skin was flaking off everywhere. there was a huge hole in the patient's foot also. the surgeon cut the skin with a scalpel first then just cut the toe off with a big bolt cutter like instrument. it was quick... i think maybe i just don't like feet. so kids, don't smoke, don't eat too many hamburgers, and don't get diabetes, otherwise you might lose a foot.