Sleeeepy.

Wow! So, yeah. I've had an interesting three days.

Tuesday, I shadowed two cardiologists. The first one was insane and really made me laugh. I read through about a thousand heart echoes with him (OK, probably about ten.) We rounded on some patients (sorry, no details. He went in the rooms by himself. Boo!) Then, I watched him insert a heart catheter...THAT was cool, once I actually figured out what they were doing and how to interpret it on the screen. What they do is insert a wire surrounded by a sheath right by the groin into the heart and its vessels and look for blockages. You can see everything they do on a camera in this huge computer lab, which also has computers monitoring the patient's vital signs and things. Later that afternoon, I also watched another cardiologists do some caths and insert a stint, which basically opens up a blood vessel so that blood can flow through it more easily. The two cardiologists I followed were nice, but definitely a little more gruff and not as warm as the female physician I followed Monday. They also said their dictations into a phone service instead of typing them out themselves, and I have never heard so many long words come out of a person's mouth at once...and so quickly! Although it got tedious to observe, I think that I would enjoy cardiology if I were actually performing the procedures myself. It was interesting to learn about, and they seemed to get a good balance of patient interaction and performing procedures...except for the second cardiologist, who performed caths like a machine and was referred to as "the man."

Wednesday...was an interesting day. I had to be in the surgery unit at the hospital for women at 7 in the morning, and I went straight to a C-section. Whoa. It was my first time seeing an actual surgery, and I never felt sick or thought I couldn't bear to watch...but C-sections are freaking GRUESOME. The OBGYN later told me that they are the bloodiest and messiest surgeries to perform, and I could see what she meant. It seemed like it took the doctor forever just to cut through all the layers before you get to the uterus, but she finally got to the uterus and moved organs aside for a little while longer before she pulled the baby out. I have to admit, it was pretty cool seeing the baby come out. It was still grayish-colored and started crying almost immediately. I guess it's just a cool feeling to be standing in a room and another person basically just appears out of thin air...or a stomach. Whatever. I watched the baby get cleaned up and saw them make the footprints and handprints. It was so sweet. Then, the mom finally got to hold her baby, and she seemed happy, but really out of it. Then, they took the baby somewhere while she got stitched up, which took FOREVER since the doctor actually stitched her up instead of using staples. The nurses told me that it was good that she was doing that because a lot of doctors use staples out of laziness. Anyway, I saw the woman in the recovery room later and it made me sad...she was just laying there without her baby or any people around her because she was hurting so badly. She had the baby by C-section because they all thought it was going to be a ten-pound baby, but it was actually only 8 pounds and some ounces...so she technically could have had it naturally if they had known the real weight, which isn't her fault. But anyway. That experience showed me that I want to avoid having a C-section by almost any means...I know some people need it in emergencies, and that's the only way I want to give birth by C-section. The nurses also told me that the doctors usually don't let laboring go beyond a certain number of hours because they are afraid of being sued by angry parents, which makes me sick. That's honestly why I don't know if I could be a surgeon or an OBGYN...it's just too much risk.

Anyway. Wow. Lots about the C-section. I also saw a labia revision...and if you don't know what a labia is, I'm not going to tell you. Haha. But I saw one get REDUCED, and it made me hurt. I also saw a fibroid the size of a baseball be removed from a uterus. Surgery is very tedious, but I like to sew, so I was actually interested in the stitching up part of it all! Later that afternoon, I went to the NICU, and I honestly did not see much except for very tiny babies and two very tired doctors who were too busy to talk to us much.

Today, we went to the center where they perform cancer treatment. We got to see how radiation is set up and administered...it's like an assembly line of patients. Almost all of them drive up every single day for months to get a couple of minutes of treatment. It's not painful for them, but depending on the radiation site, they may have side effects later. We then went and saw how dosimetry is calculated, which was complicated and full of math. At lunch, we went to a tumor conference and learned about medulloblastoma and melanoma. I liked learning about melanoma, since it's going to be the closest I get to seeing something about dermatology this month. There was also this doctor sitting behind me who sounded like Bill Lumbergh from Office Space, and it amused me. That afternoon, we saw where they give chemotherapy, which was a little depressing. The bays they sit in are so small, and some of the people in there looked like they were my age. I also saw a pain pump in someone's stomach get refilled. So far, I wasn't very interested in oncology. I know the doctors interact with patients sometimes, but I didn't see any of that today, so it didn't help me become too interested in oncology at this particular time.

Outpatient surgery tomorrow at 7.