231 Years Today

Happy Fourth of July! I hope many, if not all, of you are enjoying our nation's birthday with friends and/or family. As expected, I spent the better part of the morning in the hospital and will be on call starting at 5:00PM tonight. Ah, the life of an intern.

All in all though, I have to say I'm really enjoying being a resident despite the long hours and nearly continuous sensation of being out of my element. It's great to finally be someone's doctor, even if much of what I do is carry out orders from the guys with the big brains.

The vascular service has been interesting. Patients with vascular disease are some of the sickest in the hospital, since just about every other system depends on good blood flow to do its job. Thankfully, the nursing staff is, for the most part, very experienced and helpful. The more senior residents and fellows on the service are also a good group, as are the staff surgeons. We have two vascular fellows (fellows are residents who have finished their residency training in general surgery and are pursuing additional training in a surgical sub-specialty), one third year general surgery resident, and two interns (me and an orthopedic surgery intern). The other intern, Jason, is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin Medical School and knows his way around the hospital quite well. He's been a great asset to have on the service starting out...we've relied a lot on each other during these first few days and it's worked out quite nicely.

Regarding the patient population, much of what we do involves repairing aneurysms that occur in various blood vessels: most commonly, the aorta and its immediate branches. Depending on how the patients are treated (usually with either open or endovascular [stents and wires] surgery), their post-operative care can get pretty complex. They typically do quite well though, and it's rewarding to watch them improve from "circling the drain" to walking out of the hospital under their own power. We also treat several patients with sequelae of long-standing vascular disease (e.g., non-healing ulcers and bone infections). Despite the...well, let's just say interesting...smell and frequently gut-wrenching appearance of the feet and are therefore commonly slightly less eloquent than those of the aneurysm crowd, one kind or another (e.g., above or below and knee), and I firmly believe you haven't lived until you've handed a circulating nurse the lion's share of a severed human leg and legs of these patients, I actually enjoy them more because their operations are "intern cases" (this means I get to operate). Most of these cases are amputations of covered in betadine as routinely as if you were passing her the mashed potatoes at Christmas Dinner.

At any rate, I should really get some other things done here before my pager goes off again. Hope all is well with everyone, and I look forward to putting up another post again soon. Until then, take care and remember to live clean and fight dirty!

~AC