Estoy sin un jefe.

Our chief is out of town.  He left Wednesday morning, and will be gone through the end of the month. This leaves Rachelle (a 2nd year) and myself the Vascular Team for the last 5 days of the month of May.

What this means for Rachelle and myself...
The chief, in addition to leading the team, gets to spend the whole day in the operating room, or as the case load allows him/her to be. Once the chiefs take cases the rest get filtered down through the ranks 4th, then 3rd, then 2nd years and finally to the 1st years.  So without a chief on our team, Rachelle and I get all those extra cases. (When the chief's away, the juniors will play!) ;)

For example, yesterday I got to assist an endovascular repair of bilateral iliac aneurysms with aorto-uni-iliac graft to the L iliac. Coil embolization of the R hypogastric and R CIA.  Ligation of the R EIA. and finish it all off with a Fem-Fem bypass. Super cool stuff.

Drawing compliments of Dr. Babu

It also means longer days for myself.  Just because I'm able to spend more time in the OR, does not mean that I am excused from what normally fills my day. While scrubbed in, I give my pager to the nurse who either asks me the question or takes a message for me. And then in between cases I can get to what they had each needed.  Dr. Babu told me to eat some lunch in between our cases the other day.  I think he's too far removed from residency... I showed up to the second case having finished my floor patient notes, responded to the entire list of pager messages. Discharged two patients. Made about 15 phone calls. Saw a consult and wrote up that note with a cherry on top.

I was only able to do that though, because I was aware of what I was going to have to be able to perform and prepared the night before. I was up late working from home getting those discharges ready.  And then to the hospital even earlier than usual so I could get patients seen and as many notes done as possible before even heading to the OR.

It's never a matter of "I don't know how I'm going to do this", but rather simply an "Okay!  Let's Do This!"

Much Love.