Week three has begun! Today was a long day...11 hours straight in the OR. Our first patient was relatively easy with just a gallbladder removal, but our second patient had the right part of their thyroid removed. It's already a tough surgery to begin with because the nerve innervating the vocal cords lies right next to the thyroid, and if you damage that nerve the person basically can't speak for the rest of their life, so you have to be very careful. Well this patient had tons of nodules on his thyroid making it look like a bunch of grapes. It just made things more difficult. Our last patient actually had two surgeries, a breast cancer lump removal and a gallbladder removal. They were both sort of complicated. I walked in at 6:30am and didn't get to leave until 5:45...around 1:30 I managed to grab an apple real quick and scarf that down before the last surgery began, but just as a PSA...doctors do try to be on time! And if it means sacrificing food/bathroom/standing on one's feet for 7-8 hours at a time, they will do it :)

In other news, I'm finally suturing! Except I'm horrible at it. Quite bad actually, haha. It's a lot harder than it looks. I worked in the ER last night and did two real people who had cuts on their legs. Medically my stitches were fine and won't affect wound healing, but they might not be the absolute prettiest scars in the world :) Thank goodness for lidocaine (the pain numbing medication) so the patient can't feel what I'm doing and how long it takes! Today I got suture in the OR, and I am so thankful that the surgeon was super patient. I definitely don't have the hang of things down yet, but he was great at explaining and giving me time to finish, although we were already pressed for time to begin with.

I like working in the ER. I'm there two nights a week and I am learning a lot. Since there's only 9 beds, sometimes we're not very busy and the docs will sit down and teach me. Last Thursday I worked in the ER until 12:30 at night, after getting to the OR at 6 am, and I'm so glad I did because I learned a ton (I also got Friday off, score!) Last night I was able to leave at 10:30 which was good. I live about an hour away, which means I have to be up by 4:30/4:45 in the morning to make it to the OR by 6am...and the nights when I don't get a lot of sleep, I'm more likely to be woozy. (The other day was my first time in one of these...I was overtired and I overheated and had to sit down from a majory surgery!! Ack. Not good). The good news though is that I hardly feel the long hours, I am just having so much fun and learning a lot.