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I, being a lazy student, does not wish to return to cardiology after the above fun.  So I bribed 3 nurses and got into Dr. Victory’s OR room.

Schumacher was victory’s assistant, and anesthesiologist is Da Silva (they call him Sidney, his first name).

Victory was shook my hand and was like “Betty, welcome to the trenches.” 

and then i went into the room and Victory kept on asking me questions.

Betty where are you from. Toronto? Scarbrough? Why did you come to Windsor? Do you have over-conservative Oriental parents? No? They’re not over-conservative? They’re oriental right? Hey at least i’m half right!

Betty let’s not talk about your family now, let’s talk about your hobbies. What hobbies do you have? um? um isn’t a hobby. Ok let’s talk about boys. Any misters betty? yes? What does he do? oh he’s a med student! (“Yes you’ve taught him!”) oh what year is he in? Does he want surgery? No? what does he want, fam med? internal? (that’s when the Schumacher joke of internists and general surgeon came in…lol)

and then he’s all of a sudden serious and since i can only see his eyes and eyebrows with his mask on and everything, i saw raised eyebrows and almost a challenging expression, and he was like “so betty why aren’t you going to med school?”

And then because i got challenged i was like “I didn’t say i won’t be!” and then he got all excited. 

I gotta mention the anesthesiologist here. Sidney was so nice. He made me look into the laryngoscope and look at the epiglottis and such. and he asked me to intubate lmfao, but i’ve never learned it, so obviously i’m not gonna do it….so i said no thanks…(come think of it, i should’ve said yes ………………but i was thinking for the patient’s safety..) DAMN SHOULD’VE SAID YES!

and then as the surgery progressed, Victory explained to me a lot of the things he’s doing, Schumacher is quite silent, and Sidney also explained to me what i’m seeing on the screen.  Afterwards Sidney was like, so what kind of pain would this patient have? she’ll complain of shoulder pain b/c it’s the same nerve the runs down ur shoulder to your abdomen balhabalh.  he’s nice. comparing to the one who goes on Hotwire and sleeps, he’s a lot better.

Overall, long day. tired legs. excited to be done consolidation tmr. 

THIS IS THE BEST OR DAY EVER. i wanna be an artist too now! Long working hours (80+ a week) can be challenging…but ….come think of it…if it’s fun….

Gynecomastia patient has a lot of tattoos.  One of them actually incorporates part of his areola, as in, that tattoo purposely discontinues there, in order to create the perfect image.  The incision is again at where areola and normal skin connects, so it’s easier to hide scars.  This patient is skinny like my bf, and before I met this patient I was actually expecting some huge ass gynecomastia boobs like those ones on wikipedia.  But in reality you would not be able to tell there’s much difference between this guy’s left and right boob.  It’s his left that has more growth so they operated on his left. After removing the tissue the left does look flatter, admittedly. 

I asked Buki the resident and he said if you get gynecomastia after age 18 u should probably get it removed cuz chances are your body won’t absorb it……:S idk if that’s true though, SOMEONE should look it up, wink wink.

So what is Dr. S. doing during this surgery? He was on hotwire.com…..not joking…it’s like he doesn’t give a shit about what happens DURING the surgery…….

5th surgery of the day is the same as the 3rd one, but it’s unilateral, only left side. Also, this patient’s right breast’s implant has problems, either exploded or is getting smaller somehow or w/e, because her right breast is a LOT flatter and wrinkled and the surgeon was like “this side doesn’t look good.” but hey since she paid for her left breast capsulectomy nobody touched her right. :D

Dr. S. fell asleep during this surgery again.  no surprise there……….

now, imma dedicate the whole part 4 to Victory and Schumacher.  It’s cuz i was supposed to be going upstairs because Dr. Adams is done for the day.  But i asked the nurse Pat who brought me to Cathy, who’s working with Victory.  But Cathy left soon after, so i got Wilma instead.  Long story short, I was able to wiggle my way into Victory’s room and …. very interesting things happened. 

Basically for abdominoplasty your cutting off skin/fat.  Patients may have experienced excessive weight loss or they’ve been pregnant and their tissues started to get loose. Either way it’s not lipo, but rather actually removing part of your skin.  You’ll see what i mean. 

So first they cut around the umbilicus.  Then, they incised along the marker line already drawn.  It’s midway between umbilicus and perineum region.  Patient was intubated, eyes taped, idk why they do that, but it’s not just Dr. S. who does that.  Then they started to separate the fat tissues from the stuff below, because they just wanna remove fat/skin, not your muscles.  After a long time of cutting through soft tissues with cautery, they finally sliced off the excessive skin/fat tissue that was the size of 3 times my face.  The reason they cut around umbilicus first is because the tissues shit they removed actually surrounded umbilicus before.  After removal, you can now make a new opening and then reattach the umbilicus to the new opening and suture it.  I really enjoy the cautery burning tissue smell, it smells like barbecue but not barbecue, like, human fat doesn’t smell good when it’s burned! LOL

I ate a really healthy lunch after that, because after seeing so much human fat being removed and then looking down at your own abdomen, you feel bad if you still eat fries…(You send samples to pathology labs, so we put all of the human fat in a HUGE container and put formalin in there and then labelled and everything. It’s a lot, especially since it’s 2 huge chunks of skin+fat together, so it looks almost like those pork chops they sell in the stores, with the pig’s skin and meat connected, know what i mean now?)

Oh let’s talk about something more fun, like Dr. S.  During this 2nd surgery of the day, maybe due to the long duration, Dr. S. basically fell asleep on his nice chair and didn’t do anything…true story. 

So I went to eat lunch after and got back a little late for the 3rd surgery of the day.  It’s a bilateral capsulectomy! yay boobs! Read this page to understand the purpose of the surgery, i’m too lazy to explain: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capsular_contracture

So basically u make a curved 4cm incision right at where areolar tissue and normal skin tissues connect.  After cautery and thinning and everything, you wiggle ur fingers inside this hole of her boobs, so you can feel the bag they have implanted from before.  I’m pretty sure this patient’s implants were saline bags.  So you have to get this bag from that TINY hole, yep, you’re gonna pull, it’s tug of war! Finally! the bag is out! look at the boob now. TOTALLY saggy, flat, with wrinkled skin on top, because it’s been over stretched and now u just deflated a previously huge balloon. They then removed the capsules and stuff with cautery, again, send to pathology lab after soaking it in formalin. After all that, they have to put the saline implants back and then suture. So this woman ended up with very perky boobies, of course.

Remember our anesthesiologist? Yah, during this surgery, the woman was having bradycardia, machine was beeping, pressure was low (expected to a certain degree i suppose), guess what he’s doing? HE’S ON A CARRIBEAN TRAVEL SITE, signing up for his trip this December. Dude you make so much, and it’s only May, you don’t have sign up now!!! pay attention, you’re in a surgery…. SO I WAS THE ONE WHO NOTICED THE BRADYCARDIA!!! Dr. S. was so shocked when he saw the machine, but then because they were almost done he just turned up the NS so they gave her more fluids i guess…ugh, he’s not doing his job.

Ok, 4th surgery. MASTECTOMY…..don’t get excited yet….FOR A 23 YR OLD BOY WITH LOTS OF TATTOOS, INCLUDING THE ONES NEAR HIS CHEST! 

he got gynecomastia, yep. 

(to be continued, fuck i’m tired of writing, shower first!)

LOL @ TITLE. According to CPSO, Dr. Schumacher graduated from an Austrian university, so i’m gonna say his accent is…Austrian..whatever that’s really supposed to sound like! He’s super old, registered in 1950s, been an OBs/Gyn for 60 yrs now! 

Don’t take the title TOO seriously, I think Schumacher was trying to say OBs/Gyn is the best, that was implied. LOL..

my day at the OR has been fucking amazing.  It confirmed what I want and why iwant it, and i’m leaning a LOT more towards OR than ER now. :) Surgery, to me is the most artistic discipline in medicine.  You slice, suture, and do everything SO meticulously! It’s like a piece of art.  ER on the other hand, is probably the most gross you can get.  Vomit, feces, LOL :D

I was scheduled to follow Dr. Adams, a plastic surgeon. And after watching his 5 surgeries for the day (oh, yes, lots of boobies), I went to Dr. Victory’s endometriosis laparoscopic surgery.  I wasn’t TECHNICALLY supposed to.  But I asked Victory, and then bribed the nurses :D thank GOD my instructor doesn’t know.

So my day started at 8:45 with a carpal tunnel release on left hand.  It’s hard to say what exactly was being done because they were operating on the hand with a very small incision.  I’ll google later and see what exactly they did.  Dr. Adams has a first year resident following him, his name is Buki (pronounced “booky”). This guy has some serious background.  Dad’s a plastic surgeon, sister is plastic surgeon, brother is training in 3rd yr Schulich residency to be…yep plastic surgeon! And he’s gonna be a plastic surgeon 4 yrs from now (he’s finishing up first yr residency).

Perhaps it’s cuz they’re plastic surgeons? Because everything was drawn with markers to be very exact.  I’ve noticed that they tend to adjust their drawings in the middle of surgery too (details to follow).  Maybe it’s not all surgery that’s artistic…just plastic? hmmmmmmmmmm (I didn’t wanna see ortho or general today LOL, general surg today was boring, cholecystectomy one after another, meh)

So the 1st surgery of carpal tunnel went well, scheduled to be done in 45 minutes, Dr. Adams actually finished his (minor) part in like 10 minutes. It was Buki who opened up the incision, and then sutured.  We were on time.

Oh I forgot to mention the anesthesiologist that was assigned for the day.  I’ve worked with this guy before on OB, he’s horrible.  On OB, that was the worst C-section preparation I’ve ever seen.  We’ve draped the patient and everything (i may have mentioned this in previous posts? long ago..), and then Dr. S. (i shall not reveal his full name…) was like, oh sorry guys epidural didn’t work, we gotta undo everything and sit the patient up.  Great. Surgery was delayed for like 30 minutes.

So upon seeing Dr. S. being the anes for all of the 5 surgeries I was about to see, I was like FML.  

But the carpal tunnel went on just fine.  Surgeons did the freezing, so Dr. S. didn’t do much other than starting the IV. (Patient obvsly didn’t need to be intubated. He was so chill he fell asleep. Lucky patient)

Second surgery is perhaps the most interesting and definitely the longest surgery I’ve ever been in.  It was 3 hours and by the end I needed food desperately.  It was an elective abdominoplasty for a 56 yr old female.  In other words, a tummy tuck. 

I stood there for a LONG time, my knees were tired.  How can the surgeons not be tired from standing?!?!?!

(to be continued.)

good luck to my smartest donkey friend :D

OSCEs are easy :D

Life knows you better than you know yourself.  It gives you what you need, not necessarily what you want, at the most appropriate times.

When i wished every day to get out of the hell of IB in high school, I complained so much about the shitty guys around me and how there is absolutely nobody I wanna date.  And then I found this one at the most random place when i totally didn’t want a boyfriend.  I didn’t want one, but I needed one.

I say this because I needed happiness in my life.  I needed to feel loved and to love others.  For the past 137 days I’ve felt more supported and loved than before.  I am amazed at how life knows when to give me what I really needed.  I was way more motivated when I was happy :)

So now I’m supposed to be completing homework assignment due tomorrow.  I look at my adorable boyfriend sleeping next to me and listen to his breathing (no sleep apnea noted!), 幸せ is probably a good word to describe this feeling (this word is sooo hard to translate x.x)

Everything looks peaceful.