Missionary Orthopod in the Making

Wow so much has happened since I last blogged. I had all intentions of writing an individual post about each experience of life got in the way, so I will summarize to catch everyone up. I graduated residency from The Johns Hopkins University Department of Orthopaedic Surgery!!! 5 years ago when I started on this journey […]

The horse is made ready for the day of battle, but victory rests with the Lord. (Psalms 21:31) These words spoken by King Solomon truly sum up what the last several months have been for me. I had trials in every aspect of my life; some attendings were attempting to ruin my hopes for a fellowship match, […]

Let it be known that on this day, Friday January 23rd, I have taken my very last in house call as a resident!!!!! Never again will I have to sleep at the hospital or be at the hospital and not sleep because I’m busy reducing fractures in the ER at 3 am. Never again will […]

All my life I have attended small, Seventh-day Adventist schools which gave me an excellent education but were otherwise never well known on a national scale. Coming to Hopkins for residency was my first time being in a place where people assume you are good simply because of where you work. It’s the pedigree of […]

Being a PGY4 orthopedic resident is so much better than the previous years. As a PGY4 you are considered a “senior resident”, which is an odd feeling because you really don’t feel like one for a good while. I was so used to the mindset of, “My chief will take care of this complicated case” […]

So after much deliberation and advice from numerous residents and fellowships I have finally submitted my application for a fellowship in Pediatric Orthopaedics. It cost $100 to apply and $60 for up to 10 programs. Initially I was going to go all “Residency Applicant Mode” and apply to all of the programs, but sound advice […]

I am currently on the plane back to the U.S after an amazing mission trip to the Dominican Republic. We were working out of the CURE International hospital there which is dedicated to providing free pediatric orthopaedic care to poor children in the country (awesome right?). I first found out about this hospital from one […]

Once again I am writing this post in an airport. I’m currently on my way to Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic for a 10 day mission trip. There is a hospital there dedicated primarily to pediatric orthopaedics, and my mentor from Loma Linda as well as a great peds orthopod from Ohio will be […]

So it would seem that I only decide to blog when I’m flying to a conference…perhaps that is true. Right now I am on the plane (courtesy of Southwests $8 WIFI) on my way to the POSNA meeting in Hollywood, CA. This will be the the first POSNA meeting I have been to and the […]

I’m currently sitting in the airport in New Orleans after the 2014 AAOS Annual Meeting and I must admit that I’m entering a better stage of clarity in regards to what I want to do and be when I grow up. One of the main questions that need to be answered  as a resident first […]

I am typing this on the plane to San Diego for the AO Basic Fracture course. This is a course hosted by the AO Foundation to teach residents the fundamentals of fracture fixation. Most orthopaedic residents go to this course during this PGY-2 year, but at Hopkins we have very little free time to do […]

Note to self, Steinman pins shouldn’t impale your hand.   To make a long story short. While helping a junior resident put in a femoral traction pin, it ended up going through my 2nd web space through and through. Thank goodness he didn’t have Hep C or HIV, and thank God it didn’t get one […]

There are not many ways to describe what getting killed on call feels like, but if you are a resident at Hopkins long enough you will find out. On this past Sunday I truly learned the definition when I received 20…yes I mean 20 NEW CONSULTS. It got so bad that the pediatric ER physicians […]

          I was notified by one of the nurses at Johns Hopkins Bayview that I was on their website. I don’t ever remember a picture being taken of me so I joked and said that she needs to stop getting all of us black people mixed up. Well low and behold, […]

Today marks my last in-house call as a PGY-2 at the downtown hospital!!! Only a PGY-2 would understand what it is like to be done with in house calls at your main hospital. I know many will think, “But wait, it’s still April, how can he be done with in-house call?” You would be correct […]

The last 3 days gives you an idea of what it’s like to try to balance Orthopaedics and fatherhood and your spouse. On Wednesday I got up and into work by about 6:30am. Which is great because as an intern i was was getting in much earlier. I printed out our patient list to see […]

Wow it has really been a long time since I have had a second to post anything. When I was a college student I used to get really annoyed at reading the blogs of residents because they never seemed to update it enough. I just couldn’t understand why they would be so unreliable with their […]

Okay so I figure after 4 months I should probably start blogging again. Life has been crazy. Stay tuned for more posts.

So right now I’m on my Sports rotation and when you subtract the craziness of balancing family life, Sports is pretty awesome. I basically work with two attendings, one is a big time shoulder guy and the other a big time knee guy. With the shoulder attending I’ve been learning how to arthroscopically evalute the […]

So, as you probably guessed from my last post, I’m now a proud father of two kids. My wife gave birth to a healthy boy for which I truly praise God for. When he was born I was truly reminded of the awesome gift that God has given us to create; its a gift that the […]

Its unbelievable that I haven’t posted in 4 months, but such life when you are balancing a surgical residency and a family. So much has happened since April: 1. May 2012: This was my last general surgery rotation and it was pediatric surgery. It was actually a breath of fresh air finally getting a chance […]

So I noticed that over the past couple of months I haven’t commented on what I’ve actually been doing as a resident. Starting in late December I began my general surgery rotations that are required as part of my orthopaedic surgery residency. It is kind of the luck of the draw in terms of which […]

Like most residency programs, my program has a hall that has the pictures of resident classes dating back multiple decades. When I first arrived on campus I walked the hall in our department, looking to see when the first black resident was accepted.  It took me awhile, because everyone looks the same in black and […]

I’ve seen people die before. The very first post of my blog shows the first person that I saw die; he came in with a gunshot wound to his chest, a thoracotomy was performed, but he didn’t make it. Since that shadowing experience in college through medical school I have certainly seen patients pass away, […]

For the past 2 weeks I have been on my first General Surgery rotation called BayView Red. The service is primarily composed of vascular surgery, thoracic surgery, and trauma surgery. Needless to say these patients are much sicker than the orthopedic patients and I can truly say that I’m learning how to keep patient’s alive. […]

Attending: DoctaJay, please describe this lesion. Me: Well its a intramedullary lesion, with clear rings and stiples denoting cartilage. There also appears to be an oblique fracture traversing the distal femur. Attending: What is the diagnosis? Me: I would call this a fracture with an incidental finding of a enchondroma. ———————– This is what I did […]

This past week I witnessed and participated in something I would say is akin to the secretive and mysterious process of choosing a pope…ranking ortho sub-interns. For the uninitiated, sub-interns are 4th year medical students from Hopkins or from other medical schools who spend 2-4 weeks rotating at our hospital to find out if they […]

Being an intern is like constantly being embattled. You are responsible for everything that happens to the floor patients, and every aspect of their care. If you miss something related to their care, no matter how small or big then “you suck”. Honestly, even on my best day, I miss something, and I tend to […]

Last week I took overnight call for the first time as Orthopaedic resident and its was…exciting. It was exciting not only because it was my first call, but because Hurricane Irene was also bearing down on the East Coast, ready to bear all sorts of carnage. On the drive in to work, I saw this […]

So my honeymoon is over. This past week marked the beginning of my 2.5 months of orthopaedic trauma and it is a doozy. I had to think so much on my first day that I had a headache by 10 a.m. This past Friday was especially crazy since I had the floor pager, the ED […]

So July 1, 2011 just passed and thus began my life as a resident. A lot of things happened before my start date including taking ACLS and ATLS certification classes, getting my LONG WHITE COAT (oh yeah baby baybay!), sitting through 1.5 weeks of orientation by the general surgery department, meeting the other surgical interns, […]