Day 12

Blog Entry Day 12: 10/02/08

My second day at the clinic was interesting in terms of finding out about things that I like and I don't like. I found out that I definitely do want to help people, but I'm not sure primary care is the way for me. Now granted, I also need to factor in the language barrier into my experience, in that I am limited in asking questions and receiving information on the cases that we see. Also, it might just be this particular rotation, or day, in which I don't see that much. So, I won't judge this as my deciding experience on whether I want to do primary care or not. But I noticed that it does get quite repetitive at times, and most of the procedures involve looking for infections by examining the throat, the ear, or the body in a basic set of ways. Though, one case in particular really excited me today.
A girl the age of 16 came in. Initially, I couldn't tell what was wrong with her, but the doctor told me to follow her into this mini-operating room. The girl took her sweater off only to reveal a ridiculously large stab wound, and when I mean large I mean LARGE. It was stitched up, but the wound itself traced down at least half of her arm. She took off her bandage and we checked for areas that secreted puss. Most of the stab wound was healed; but the area we looked at, which also looked like bullet hole due to its odd circular shape (I'm not sure if that actually happened, i suppose a knife could've been twisted in a circle, as another possbility), was still very wet with blood and puss. So, we wiped that part of the arm down with swabs soaked in iodine and alcohol, and then squeezed it, so that the puss came out. Once the puss came out, we cleaned it, then reapplied alcohol and iodine, and re-bandaged her wound. An interesting thing I noticed was that there was three dots tattooed on to her hand, and I think that means she's part of a Mexican gang, so I wouldn't be surprised if her wound occurred due to some extremely shady situation. I was just glad I got to assist by providing iodine and alcohol soaked swabs, as well as being able to get a really good look at the wound. It was really sad to see this young girl in that sort of condition because it was extremely painful, and the experience of getting that wound was probably pretty traumatic.
Reflecting back, the most exciting rotation I've had so far has been my first surgery rotation, which was the arthroscopy. I felt that it was more hands on and involved, and for some reason I just like to see blood, tissue and everything inside the body. But, I still think that I'm not giving primary care a fair chance, mainly because I can't understand what Dra. Ana Maria is saying, and I'm guessing if I was able to, I would be hearing really interesting conditions and problems. Again, I have to give her a lot of kudos for going through as many patients as she doest without any breaks; she goes 5 hours at a time with 12-15 patients in that time period. I didn't really get a chance to take pictures of me doing anything, but I'll ask when I'm comfortable enough with her to bring it up.