I got back yesterday from a rigorous externship in Knoxville, Tennessee. I literally lived in the hospital in a residents call room all week, on call every night. It is a large trauma center in the area with a lot of interesting things coming in during the night. There is also a very big oral cancer surgeon there that I was able to shadow quite a bit which was great. All in all, it was fantastic with so many things to see, but a long week. Luckily I got to sleep most nights, unusual for how busy a hospital it is.
Some of the things I saw: multiple oral cancer surgeries. Some involved neck dissections removing big chunks of muscle, vessels, and metastasized lypmh nodes. I saw the removal of part of a jaw and replacement with a small titanium plate for a jaw that was being infiltrated with dying bone. Some HUGE dental infections where the patient's faces looked like watermelons and had to be on IV antibiotics for days. One woman started with what was probably a pimple on her lip, turned into a huge facial infection which split her lip completely open and was draining pus (yuck). Some significant mandible fractures from motor vehicle accidents. Very cool stuff.
I am glad to be back. I am working in the Oral Surgery clinic for emergencies here at the school. I need to get my application in this week, hopefully today. I have had such a brain freeze on my essay but I just have to get it done at this point. I am also re-evalutating my plan after getting bad news over a bad grade in my biggest class ever which significantly lowered my gpa and may take me out of consideration for the OS program. Sigh.
But, good news...no HepC or HIV from my needle stick.
That's my update of the week!
1 comment:
haha i was wondering why you hadn't blogged in awhile. Sounds like it was a pretty great experience.
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