That's surgery speak for post-operative day 1, status/post surgical oncology. AKA, my first rotation is over! And it's a bittersweet day indeed.
1. I loved surgery more than I thought possible. It is a mind-blowing task what surgeons do every day. To first earn the trust of their patients, then be allowed to put them to sleep and cut them open and put their hands all up in their insides...with the ultimate goal of fixing something and putting them back together again. And I do love putting my hands in people's insides! As my attending noted yesterday, it does not require such a high degree of trust to put a patient on, say, an antihypertensive medication (which the patient can opt to take or not), to follow up with them and tweak the dose as needed. It's just a different kind of relationship.
2. The surgeons and residents themselves were fantastic people who I would be honored to work with. Despite some of their less awesome quirks and occasional outbursts in the OR, they are a fun and intelligent bunch.
3. The patients, the majority being people who have cancer (though not all!), are phenomenal. A few patients were with our service the majority of our month on duty and we were able to form an admittedly strange but significant bond with them. Strange because of the types of conversations we have, either on rounds ("have you passed gas today?), or while packing a wound ("say, what's going on in the world?"). Others were in and out of the hospital quite quickly, but we saw many in clinic for follow-up or, unfortunately, back in the hospital due to complications. Some were rather sad, palliative cases. Some were there for curative treatment and watching their progress from a sick, surgical patient to a healthy patient walking out the door is really satisfying.
So, that is that.
This next month is my surgical subspecialty month where I will spend 2 weeks on Urology and 2 weeks on Neurosurgery.
