Rebound

Today was actually a pretty good day. I haven't said too much about school lately, except that I didn't want to be here, but today I had a good time. I was in the OR with Dr. B, an awesome Cardiothoracic surgeon who loves me :) He gave me a kick-ass evaluation, and told me he didn't want me to be a surgeon because he didn't want to compete with me. It was awesome.

I'm off now to Journal Club (the surgery folks get together at a restaurant and one of the attendings or residents presents an article for the purpose of reviewing the literature and having a bit of social time), then home to pack pack pack because I go HOME tomorrow, never to return to this place again! Yay!

I miss Megan like crazy, with her home all alone... :( I can't wait until I get to see her more often. This arrangement has been generally horrible, and it's about (damn) time that I get to spend some time with her that isn't rushed.

Not much to say

We're 9 DPO today (or 10? not sure...) and have not tested. We don't plan to until Thursday at the earliest, and even then we might not. It's Megan's 25th birthday and we want to enjoy it, and what would make it better than a BFP? Sadly, a BFN would definitely make it worse, so what can you do? Anyway, she's not saying much about how she's feeling and isn't really obsessing, which is healthy, so we'll just have to see what happens.

As for me, I'm post-call after my first Trauma call and I must say it was just as exciting as my LAST call. Yep, no calls. We had one trauma during regular hours (elderly woman fell), but that was it, so really, I just got a good night's sleep (well, until 4:30 am when I had to get up anyway). So yeah, nothing too cool to talk about. Having call on Monday sure does make the week fly by though! One week from tomorrow, I move back home NEVER to come to York again! I'm going to push to switch my family medicine to someplace more local if at all possible b/c I can't exactly take the care with me here...Megan needs it for work!

So I'm off to throw down some lunch, then practice sewing together dead stuff so I can get better at suturing lacerations. Woot!

I cured cancer!

well, rather, I held retractors and cut sutures (new skill for me today!) while the breast and plastic surgeons cured cancer. I helped do a bilateral total mastectomy and reconstruction today, which took a whopping 5 hours, two surgeons, two residents, one relatively worthless medical student, two scrub nurses, two circulators, an anesthesiologist, and a CRNA. Phew! It was totally awesome that both of the surgons were women :) Anyway, the surgery went really well and the cosmetic effect was really good. Since this patient had a lot of skin left over, they were able to fill the saline implants a bit today (often they have to wait for the stitches to heal), which will be really good for this particular patient (she's only 40 and very depressed, and had a hard time deciding if she wanted to do both mastectomies or just the one side with the cancer. Anyway, there were no metastases to the nodes, so it was a total success and felt fantastic.

My only major foibles were nearly passing out after the first hour. I ate a balanced breakfast, hadn't had any caffeine, and was moving my legs, but it got really hot inside the gown (picture one Karisa with scrubs, shoe covers up to mid-calf, a mask, a really big eye shield, big poofy hair cover, calf-length plastic surgical gown, and two pairs of latex gloves!) and I had to say I was feeling faint...so I backed up and had to have someone sit me down, scrub me out (ie take off everything but scrubs, shoe covers, mask, and head cover), and put alcohol pads on my neck (for cooling), then go get some juice and rest for a few minutes. It happens a lot, but this was my first one. anyway, the surgeons let me scrub back in and I finished the whole thing out without incident, and got to help :) :)

I was DEAD after that long, so I grabbed some lunch and took a nap...

Anyway, time for me to head back. My 3 pm lecture was cancelled but the 4 pm one is still on, so must pelt down a beverage before scrambling back to the classroom to learn about...something. I don't remember... Never a dull moment!