Where the wilds things are....

Do you remember that book about the kid who goes to sleep and has all those crazy monsters in his dream? That along with an incident this week gave me the idea for the topic of my blog this week.

The week started off very early on Monday morning and since I wasn't used to the time difference it was like waking up in the middle of the night for me. I guess this is what it will be like during first year of residency on some of the rotations. I made it to the hospital on time and found where we were suppose to meet in the morning. This is a very unique program in that all of the residents are very autonomous in their work and they don't have someone looking over their shoulder which is very nice. All the guys were cool and are all willing to teach and answer any question that you might have. There are two other students with me this month, one from Chicago and one from Ohio, pretty cool dudes. This is a very heavy surgical program and the residents work with over 60 attendings in the area that bring in cases every week that the residents are suppose to help with. This approach as an extern gives us the opportunity to scrub in and assist on a lot of different cases for the week. This is nice as a student cuz the days go by quickly when you are in surgery all day. After this week I probably scrubbed in on a dozen or so cases and will continue to do that for the rest of the month. 

Now that I have given a background of what I am doing with my weeks here in VA, you are probably wondering how my story ties into my theme for the week. On friday I was told to go to a surgery center across the street from the hospital and that it would be quicker to walk there as oppose to getting my car. As I am walking there, you have to walk through the woods so you don't have to walk all the way around, a deer jumps out from behind a tree and is only 5 feet from me and staring me straight in the eye. Not expecting this, it startled me and I just stared right back. It eventually ran off and I made it to the surgery center where the attending allowed me to do a hammertoe procedure.

can u see the deer?

The moral to the story is that you can't be caught off guard and things happen when you least expect it.

I learned this a few times in the OR this week that you have to be prepared to handle things when you aren't expecting them to happen.

Peace,

J