My co-intern this month on Vascular is John W., one of the Neurosurgery interns who is rotating with us for a month. At first meeting he immediately comes off as a Nerd. But underneath the Nerd... the guy is really good at what he does! The medicine he Aces. And at first I was worried about his bedside manner, because at baseline he is abrupt with affect on the flatter side. But he does just fine with the patients and families as well.
Our first day on Vascular was this past Monday. Myself, brand-new to the Vascular service, and Him, not only brand-new to Vascular but to General Surgery as well. And on our first day on service, we were the entire service. Our chief was taking his ABSITE, and our other senior had worked the night before and so was post-call and off for the day. A few seniors from other services checked up on us throughout the day to make sure everything was okay. And it was. I wasn't worried. We rounded together in the morning to meet all of our patients and introduce ourselves. Then throughout the day we split. I took the cases and John W. handled the floors.
The cardiovascular system is one of my favorite systems of the human body. There are definite tedious parts to the surgeries, but the exciting parts are so satisfying. It is also very common for these surgeries to be on the "greater than" side of 4hours. So they seemingly take a huge chunk out of the day for me, as we're still expected to manage everything on the floor patients.
As for the patients... if a patient is on the Vascular Surgery service... they are usually very sick. Horrible vasculature typically accompanies things like 'End Stage Renal Disease,' 'Congestive Heart Failure' 'Gangrene' 'Diabetes'. In other words, they come in a carried bucket full of disease. Vascular surgery does its thing, and at best they walk out a bucket full of disease.
So far I'm liking Vascular. I'm also liking that I get to be on Vascular this month in particular. Red for St. Valentine's Day. I like it!
Much Love.
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