The Curious Scalpel

A reader boldly asked a very good question recently.  What business do I, a first-year medical student, have being scrubbed into a total joint replacement?  What do I know about surgery?  I haven't even finished half of the academic courses yet, what good could I do standing around an already crowded surgical field with minimal (more like "zero") experience? It's a good question, and credit to the reader, he asked it in a very tactful way.   So, what am I doing there?  The answer, of course, is learning.  Mostly.  I also help out a little, but whatever I do could be done by the resident or the surgeon, or the scrub nurse.  I pass stuff, I lift stuff, stabilize the patient when there's drilling or sawing or hammering to be done, that kind of thing.  But the learning is the key thing. I'm learning what surgery is like, trying to imagine doing that a few times a week for the rest of my life.  So far, it seems possible.  But I've got ...

I've started my summer job. Before I get into what I'll be doing, since that's not entirely clear at this point, and not the most exciting part of this post, I'll talk about my experiences scrubbing in on knee replacements.  Queasy folks beware - much descriptive gore ahead. Knee replacements, and all joint replacements, really, are a very interesting kind of procedure in that they can be easily explained to a layperson without the layperson knowing what happens or how on Earth it's done. Take knee replacements. Ask Joe Everyman what a knee replacement surgery is and he'll probably tell you it's when the doc puts in a metal knee. Sounds so simple.   But here's something Mr. Everydude didn't consider:  how does this new metal knee FIT in there? You can't just stick a big hunk of metal in between someone's femur and tibia and expect their legs to remain the same length. But he understands that, so he could think for a moment and say, a...

I mentioned here  that I think I might be interested in surgery.  Also, the title of my blog serves as a half-decent clue. But while before, I was just thinking about it, now I'm actually DOING something to inch closer to that profession (while still not committing to anything). This summer, I'm going to be doing some research (pronounced: reh-SURCH for many) in the wonderful field of Orthopaedic Surgery. If I'm going to spell it that way, I'll need to start practicing the above pronunciation of "research."  Anyway, I digress. I'll be working on a project involving spinal fusions.  That sounds really cool, doesn't it? Well, that's because it is really cool.  I've also joined the board of my school's Surgery Interest Group. We just held an event tonight about how to get the most out of the summer research experience, and it provided some great insight into what we want to do while we're participating in surgical research.  Basically,...

Of course that's why I gave such a long delay. Homework is tough, and you're all busy people.  For those of you that figured it out on your own, well done. Top drawer.  Gold star. For those of you that figured out that all you needed to do was go read the other blog, you get TWO gold stars, because you actually used the hint I gave instead of making it hard on yourself for no good reason. Among the myriad other reasons why I didn't post anything in the last two months are: exams, the weather, and not having much to say. I also didn't get any requests from readers for a new blog post. But I can't blame you guys, you were probably doing the homework. Anyway, I finally have stuff to say. Anatomy is well over by now, but there's loads of other stuff going on.  First of all, I need to explain the homework answer.  Actually, I need to give it, I see now that I haven't yet done that. The question was, why would I bother putting an account of my tonsillecto...

Hey there, faithful readers.  As indicated by the title, I'm still alive, though I am on a soft foods diet.  Did I get in a fight?  Did you see the other guy?  Did Chuck Norris pay me a visit? None of that. I had my tonsils out. "Tonsils out?" you ask. Isn't that for kids?  Yes, usually... and it should have been for me as a kid, too, except it wasn't, so now I had it done as an adult.  I'm glad I could clear everything up for you. Unfortunately, having them out as an adult is supposed to be far more painful than having them out as a kid.  I say "supposed to be" because I'm not really experiencing the true wrath of tonsillectomy pain (yet?).  My little buddy Percocet is taking care of that.  It still hurts, sure, but no more than a bad bout of Strep does.  And I'm doing this to eliminate risk of future strep infections... so I can consider this my final case of Strep, and when you look at it that way, it's no big deal. ...

As the title of this post clearly indicates, we started work on the brain yesterday.  Also, in a brilliant display of timing, yesterday was the day that we hosted pre-med college students in our anatomy labs to show them what anatomy is like and talk them over some of their apprehensions.  Surprisingly, the ones I saw were mostly okay with what was going on before their eyes.  Our student handled it really well, watching (from a distance) as we freed the brain from its housing and asking questions throughout, though he said that it would probably hit him on the ride home and he'd start getting nauseous.   It was definitely an oscillating-saw day.  The skull, as any boxers out there might know, is a fairly effective protector for the jellylike brains within (to an extent).  We really had to work at it to free the brain .  We first removed the scalp, exposing the skull bones beneath.  We then cut through the bone around the widest part of the sku...

Today we reached the skull .  I'm sure many people wonder about that image, especially when they see someone with an especially round face, or a long face, or a heart-shaped face or whatever. Not everyone has that angular, skeletal look that strongly hints at what lies beneath. Sometimes, you might wonder whether Matt Damon and Lawrence Fishbourne  could possibly have such similar bone structure, but in fact they do.   Our cadaver, Ralph, had more of a Fishbourne-eque face, rounded and with softer features, but guess what?  Remove the skin, some fatty layers, muscular layers, and viola -  classic skull.   It's a strange thought for some, that everyone's bony structure looks the same, but others who may have lost (or gained) significant amounts of weight might be all too familiar with the way facial features can change drastically with the loss or gain of some extra fat (or a facelift).  It just goes to show, once again, that we all are way mo...

I've always liked putting things together, I'm kind of artistic, and I don't mind blood and guts.  So I figured that naturally, I'd make a good surgeon. So tonight, I went to a club event where they taught how to suture and had free pizza. The pizza was good.  I also discovered that suturing is fun (we practiced on fresh, still bloody, pig's feet ).  I'm also not terrible at it, which is a relief. Then I came home and practiced some "microsurgery", by which I mean taking some links out of my new watch. Unfortunately, it takes a little bit more training to be an officially qualified, board-certified surgeon.  Sigh, someday...

You would think that the facial dissection is the most traumatic, and you would probably be right.  It's an area of "high emotional impact," they say, which means that you associate with it, or feel like it would be painful.  That, our instructors explained, is why my medical school pushes it off until later.  Some other schools, which shall remain nameless, BEGIN with the face, on the first day of school.  Maybe it's to show the students that medical school is not easy, or that they have to be self-important showoffs to be good at their job, I don't know.  But I do know that it's really nice of our course directors to take our mindset into consideration when designing the curriculum.  It's further proof that our teachers are not trying to give us undue nightmares, or scare us into studying harder, rather choosing to focus their efforts on teaching us in the most efficient and useful way possible. In any event, I said that you would probably be right. ...

Yeah, it's about that time.  We just got back from break on Monday, and we began a new unit in Anatomy - the Head&Neck.   Queasies , consider yourselves warned... I can't be highlighting entire posts, that would seriously cramp my style. Anyway, with this region come many new and/or exciting things, like finding out what those glands in your neck look like, performing a cricothyrotomy (that's the procedure T.V. docs are constantly shown performing, with a ball-point pen and a knife, by punching a hole in someone's throat to give them an airway), and seeing the muscles that control a smile.  This should provide a lot of interesting things to think about.  But I have to learn all the parts of the skull now, so for now, let's just say I owe you one.