So as you know I am done with my 6 weeks of general surgery and now I am on my 6 weeks of surgical subspecialties. I spent the first 2 weeks of my surgical subspecialties on neurosurgery and the coolness of seeing the brain definitely wore off after the first week. But this past week I was on my 1 week of orthopaedics and it was truly the most fun that I have had since I started medical school, which I truly praise God for. I praise God because although I knew I was somewhat interested in orthopaedics, I hadn’t done an official rotation in it yet so I couldn’t truly say that I wanted to do ortho for the next 60 years of my life, but I enjoyed this week so much that I have no doubts that I can do it for the rest of my life.
So my week of ortho started out on Monday with spine clinic which was actually quite familiar since I just finished 2 weeks of neurosurgery. In the ortho spine clinic we saw a lot of the same types of conditions that I saw in the neurosurgery spine clinic like spinal stenosis, spondylothesis, degenerative disc disease, etc. But for some reason, I enjoyed the orthopaedic side of it more…maybe it was the attending and the residents, but I wasn’t looking at my watch the whole time in clinic for the first time of my 3rd year. I knew that I was really interested in orthopaedics this week because it was the first time that I was writing down all the new things I was learning in my little notebook, lol. I had started strong writing down stuff during my first month of 3rd year but I fell off simply because I didn’t care that much, but this week I started up again.
On Tuesday, I had my only OR day of the week, and it was with one of the sports attending here LLU. It was actually a pretty short day of operating but still everything I saw was really interesting. That day we had shoulder arthoscopy to repair a rotator cuff repair and a knee scope on a young athlete to clean out her all the fibrosis that had formed from a previous ACL repair. It might be sad to say, but I’ll admit that Tuesday was the first time in my medical school career that I truly understood the rotator cuff. In the past 3 years I had answered many questions about the rotation cuff but without a firm understanding of exactly how it was structured, but seeing it through the camera just switched on a light in my head.
On Wednesday I had clinic with one of the hand attending who also happened to be the program director for the ortho program here at LLU and I much say that it didn’t go very well. First off I was only able to spend 4 hours in his clinic because I had an ortho lecture during the morning hours, so when I went to clinic he immediately told me to go in and see patients. But I had no idea where the progress notes were, how to access the patient’s xrays, how to really do a good hand exam, or really anything helpful at all. After about an hour he told me that I was going to slow, lol, and yeah…the day just didn’t go well. I went home feeling really deflated because I jacked up with ortho program director. But I talked with some 4th years trying to match into ortho and the reassured me that all was not lost and that he didn’t hate me…at least I don’t think so……
Wednesday night I was on call and I was super excited. I came in at 5 p.m and I actually walked by the pgy-2 on call as I was walking in, as he headed towards his car. This should have been a sign that it was a slow night because the PGY-2 had time to leave and grab something to eat, lol. But as he was walking out he told me to page the intern who was on call and help them out, so I did. When I went upstairs where the interns were they were both people that I had met before which made it easier. It was a really slow night thus far so we just talked for a little bit about ortho and then they sent me to go and get dinner. I waited around for a couple more hours, and nothing came in at all. At about 11 p.m. the PGY-2 came in and told me to go home. I was a little hesitant because I really want to do ortho so I don’t want to leave early on call, but he told me that he already knew that I wanted to do ortho so going home wasn’t going to affect his view of me, lol, so I listened and went home.
On Thursday, I had foot and ankle/ pediatrics clinic which I really enjoyed. Every patient that we saw the diagnosis was quite clear and the fix for it was even more straight forward which I really enjoy. There was this little 7 year old girl that was in the room with her mother. We asked the girl what happened to her foot and she said, “I had a weight in my hand…and it dropped and fwaktured my fwoot”. Lol, she was so cute.
Overall I really enjoyed my week and I am quite sure now that orthopaedics is the field for me. I was also happy to see that the ortho residents are finally starting to acknowledge my existence and I hope that eventually they will actually like me. Next week I start my week of anesthesia, but I will only be there until Wednesday, because on Thursday and Friday I will be at the J.R. Gladden Orthopaedic Society meeting at the AAOS meeting in New Orleans, LA. This should be a really amazing opportunity to meet the big minority ortho guys in the field before I start my application process this year. I will make sure to blog all about my experiences there.
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