way up north...

Since the last time I have posted, there hasn't been a ton of excitement. After all, the coolest cases stay in the ER and don't come over to intermediate care. Plus I had the joy of catching a GI bug whcih kept me home for two days (and I am glad today was scheduled as a day off for a bit more recovery).

THere have been a lot more ear infections, URIs, some UTIs, back pain and dental pain. We had one person come in with constipation x8 days. Turns out he had a bowel obstruction, we (meaning they) dropped an NG tube, got a CT and admitted him. He is actually a really nice guy and we have been following up on him and visiting him on the floor. He even sent "his ER girls" flowers to thank us for "saving him". They were going to do a colonoscopy, but after a couple of days of abx he actually passed some stool. So they were thinking diverticulitis and planning on discharging him. Until he stopped up again, so when they did scope, they could only get up to the sigmoid before finding the obstruction. Sigh. They were supposed to perform a resection with a colostomy on Monday, but since I have been out I don't know what the result was. I know what they were thinking, but I hope it isn't the case. Anyway, I am thinking this might be an interesting case to present (I am EOR #2) so I need to find out what I need to do to get copies of films and reports.

I hadn't been getting a chance to do any procedures for a while, then Saturday hit. I was working with a different woman than normal and we almost never stopped. We didn't get lunch until after 3 in the afternoon, and dinner was at 7:30 or so. I was able to do two digital blocks. One was to remove a large splinter from under the fingernail of a kid, the other was to I&D a nasty abscess on a finger (a two-fer). I sutured an arm, and was trying to to the chin of a 5 year old until he freaked out. I ended up helping to hold him with one hand, while keeping the other sterile to hand stuff to my preceptor for the day. I will say that little kids and sutures are nota good mix! Oh, I also got to watch the ER docs reduce a dislocated shoulder on a large (muscular, not fat) guy. The normal conscious sedation was not enough to relax the muscles, so they had to call in anesthesia for backup.

I can't believe that we are almost done with this rotation! it has flown by. I definitely feel more confident than I did at the beginning, but I know I still have a lot to learn.