Things I Learned on Overnight Call

1. My brain starts to turn into mush after about 22 consecutive hours of consciousness.
2. Stream of consciousness pimping from my resident is an excellent way to keep me one my toes
   
3. Nothing helps time fly quite so well as a trauma
4. If you want a consult to be done quickly...don't ask me to do it
5. Call beds are surprisingly comfortable, although this may have had more to do with the fact that I had been up for 23.5 hours
6. I actually know how to manage acute cholecystitis (gallbladder infection)
7. I can run very well on 2 hours of sleep...until I get a chance to sit down and then I'll probably face plant on the nearest horizontal surface...kinda like I did when I got home at noon and tried to check my email
8. Pagers completely boggle my sleep-addled brain
9. I love the patient that is happy to answer all my questions when I come in to write his post-op note at 1AM, and I love the nurse that gives me a hard time about how exhausted I look and then starts laughing with me when I tell him how long I've been up.
10. Sleep is precious and AMAZING!
    

The Crocheting Surgeon

Today I scrubbed in on an incisional hernia repair. The attending placed all the sutures through the fascia (the tough part beneath the muscles for you lay people) and then placed mesh over the hernia. He then set about trying to pull all of these loose threads through the holes in the mesh, he started out with some small pointy clamps but then one of the nurses asked him if he wanted a crochet hook. I'm pretty sure my eyes bulged out of my head. The nurse came back with this crazy crazy small hook and the attending set to work...he kept getting caught on the mesh and I couldn't help snickering to myself. Why, you ask? Because I couldn't help but get the feeling that my fiber arts skillz would have made me much much faster that both the attending and my resident. But I was a good little med student...I did not give them pointers, I did not laugh, I stood there holding my scissors ready and waiting to cut any knots that might need trimming.

The saddest part of this whole story? Aside from petting my Doctor's bag everyday on the shuttle to and from the hospital this is the only remotely fibery thing going on in my life. I have not knit a single stitch since orientation on the 7th. Ah well...better get back to my reading, I have a conference on lung cancer tomorrow and I need to be prepared! Happy knitting everyone!

Happy Birthday, Blog!

Today is my first blogiversary. I started this blog due to a combination of a desire to talk about my knitting and my extreme boredom at my summer job. Over the past year I've found many other blogs that I read on a regular business and made a few friends. In the future I hope to have the time/money to participate in some swaps and get to know more of my fiber-loving comrades.

I got my Pay It Forward Exchange gift from Alicia! They're beautiful aren't they? There hasn't been too too much going on on the knitting front lately. I spent most of my 5 weeks off reading for pleasure and hanging out with people that I never seem to get a chance to see anymore. But I do have a some progress to show you. First of all, I managed to finished sewing The Afghan together. I still have approximately 1 million ends to weave in. Sadly I don't have any knots to tie so I can't practice my surgeon's knot on it. I've made a fair amount of progress on my Dorky Socks...not that far from finishing it but I don't think there's going to be much knitting time on this rotation. I also plugged ahead a fair amount on the Lacy Scarf. I really like the way that it's coming out...and I love all the compliments I keep getting on it, even from people who don't knit!

I'm sorry to say that the likelihood of my updating frequently looks like it's going to be pretty small for the next few months as I will have very little knitting to show you. There's only so much surgery I can talk about before I might start grossing people out :P

Things that I have learned so far on my Surgical rotation:

• The OR is my crack...seriously
• ENT is awesome
• Head and Neck is even more awesome
• Holding retractors can be a lot harder than you might think
• My very asthmatic body doesn't like it when I try to sprint up three floors (each story about 15-20 feet) to get a scope and a light source for a STAT page for ENT to the MICU...the best part of that whole situation being that they ended up not needing us.
• Surgical rotation is the best diet I could have ever asked for, the combination of never getting to sit for more than 3 seconds and rarely getting to opportunity to eat is doing wonders for my weight.
• When they tell you to go home...GO!