June Newsletter

My sister is getting married today!
Getting on to my comparatively mundane news, June has been fun. I again took electives, this time two weeks of radiology with an interventional radiologist, and a week of orthopedic surgery with an orthopedic oncologist who happens to be my uncle. I liked the hospital-based nature of this radiology practice, compared with the strictly outpatient setting of a radiology center that I experienced before. The radiologist still did the routine of sitting in front of a computer reading imaging studies, but he would get called away to do procedures, even more so than a typical radiologist, since he did interventional. The interventional aspect entailed more invasive studies than just barium swallow or enema. He would put central lines and other invasive catheters under fluoroscopic guidance and biopsies under ultrasound and CT guidance. The intravascular work was painful. Poking a hole through the skin into the vessel was the most exciting part, and then it's a tedious series of threading a guide wire into just the right vessel branch, sliding a catheter over it, taking out the original guide wire, inserting a different guide, then removing the catheter, then placing a wire-guided whatever, then taking that out, then putting the catheter back in, then taking the wire out.... I'm glad there are people who enjoy this type of work because it's not my cup of tea. It was a good experience to see what the interventional side of interventional radiology is like.
Working with my uncle in orthopedics reaffirmed again that I need to be an othopod. Every time blood gets splattered or bones get hewn, I grin from ear to ear. This type of barbarism would normally land you in an asylum for the criminally insane, but you can actually improve patients' quality of life by playing wood shop on their internal parts. Working with my uncle, who knows and I assume trusts me better than a typical attending would, I was allowed to do more than a typical third/fourth-year would. The procedure that stands out the most was an above-elbow amputation for synovial cell sarcoma of the elbow. I did the large-scale work and my uncle stepped in when more finesse was needed. I could go on for pages about orthopedics, but I'll finish by saying arthroscopic procedures are a lot harder than they look; I wore myself out hardly doing anything.
Off to studying and wedding preparations.

Scott