Scalpel

This morning I saw a reversal of an ileostomy. The patient apparently had had rectal cancer previously and had undergone surgery to treat it. The surgeon created an ileostomy (small bowel empties into a bag stuck to patient’s skin) to let the colon heal. Now that it has healed, the ileostomy could be repaired. I got to sew the incision at the end.

The afternoon was spent entirely in clinic with one other student. One patient was a 97 year old lady who had a sebaceous cyst on her chest that had grown to the size of a small apple since July. The doctor decided to do an incision and drainage to get all of the pus and nasty stuff out. He handed me the scalpel, so I got to make an incision on a live person for the first time in my life. Very neat.

One of my other patients has had intermittent burning epigastric pain for the past several years. A CT scan she had last month showed some gallstones, so she assumed the pain was due to that and made an appointment with the surgeon (for some reason she doesn’t have a primary care doctor). Turns out she has had acid reflux and probably could have easily corrected it by seeing a family doctor years ago.

We have lecture all day tomorrow. It can be annoying sometimes, but it can be a nice break too.