Day 7: There's a first for everything

Today was my first day shadowing in surgery, ever! I didn't start in the OR, however, but at Dr. Fitzgerald's (who is a pediatrist and does lower extremity reconstruction) office at Patewood. In the morning we began by taking care of at least a dozen patients in the clinic. In between patients he was kind enough to answer my questions about his experience in medical school, working abroad in Guatemala, and having served as a doctor in the arm forces working on patients who had been a little to close to a land mine when it had exploded. One specific case that he showed me was about charcot, a disease that can relapse and the patient's bones in their foot become soft and break easily. The patient doesn't feel the pain, however, and the foot can become severely deformed. The only way to fix it is to cut a wedge into the bottom of the foot during surgery and reconstruct the arch. Its a very interesting procedure! Dr. Fitzgerald did invite me to come observe a case in the OR on Friday but I doubt I will be able to go because of the MedEx lectures planned for that day.

Most of Dr. Fitzgerald's patients at the clinic are older, diabetic (which result in ulcers forming on the bottom of their feet), and poor circulation in the leg. He is pulled aside by a couple of other physicians to give his professional opinion about a young man who cut his foot while swimming. The foot was severely damaged from approximately the toes to mid-way through the arch. Eventually, the boy would have to get surgery to clear any more debris and stitch the loose skin back together. It seemed pretty gruesome to me but I was definitely not prepared for what I would see in the OR later.

After scrubbing up I go to meet Dr. Ftizgerald in the OR upstairs at the main campus. It's scary at first because I get to meet the patient moments before he passes out on the table and the doctor begins to lacerate his foot. It makes me nauseous to watch at first but that soon passes to fascination. At first i can't wrap my head around the fact that the's chipping away at a man's toe-bone and snipping at the ligaments. Before I know it the resident in the room is drilling in large rods through the toes and sticking him up, an hour already passed.

The next procedure is equally interesting, but faster. It seems that the surgeons do as much waiting in between patients sometimes as they do actually taking care of him. For this second case I watch Dr. Fitzgerald quickly cut under the sulcus all the way to the bone to release her tendon. Its certainly one of the most interesting things I have ever seen.

Before shadowing today I had never thought about becoming a surgeon. I knew that I wanted to be apart of the OR team potentially as an anesthesiologist but maybe that might change with more shadowing experiences...

#MedExTierII