M3-- WEEK SEVEN

This morning was glorious. I set exactly ZERO alarms.. I laid in bed for an hour checking all the social media forums on the phone that I've been banning myself from.. I refrained from making any to-do lists.. and I ate delicious food! Sure there were things that I should have been working on (like this blog post!) but I found that by not stressing myself into being productive I still accomplished a lot without all the yuck. So yea, it was a good day!

This week was one of those weeks that probably only my fellow medical student friends can relate to.. I would spend hours preparing for an operation only to get a text message late that night asking if I would be willing to do a different one.. one that was 12 hours long! (Which was a crazy-cool operation to be a part of, just a stressful student moment trying to be prepared!). Every time I prepared for a case I was asked ZERO questions from the attending (or residents for that matter).

Head and Neck Oncology was an awesome group to be with because they do amazing facial reconstructions. We were taking bone and skin from patients' legs and rebuilding their jaws. I would love to talk with the first person who woke up one day and said, "today.. I want to remove their leg bone and stick in in their face and see if it lives." Seriously. That is one brave and creative person! Fun fact- the first one was done the year I was born!

I don't think much of what I experienced this week will be applicable if I go into general pediatrics aside from giving me a lot of motivation to help kids quit smoking (or even better- never start!) because nearly all of the patients had a long history of smoking and often continued throughout all their treatments. But regardless, it was incredible to be a part of these amazing transformations for a week.

Next I move on to orthopedics which, to be honest, isn't terribly interesting to me. I think joint  replacements will be neat operations to watch. Also, thinking about the hardware and what we have available to offer patients was fascinating to me in Head and Neck surgery- so that will play into this rotation as well. Even though I will be distracted from this rotation studying for my exams that are just around the corner, I feel like this will be really good knowledge for F&F questions (F&F = friends and family).

Now, it's time to wrap up this post because T and I are eating dinner outside in this gorgeous weather. We have to soak up every free minute we have before I head to Grand Island in two weeks! Then, after dinner, it's time for lawn games with friends!

Have a great week!

xo,
Krista