I have a feeling we aren't in Kansas anymore...

Went on my second hospital visit last week. Rounded on post-op patients, and learned about ovarian cysts, uterine polyps, spontaneous miscarriage, D&C (which I used to think was only for abortions, but apparently is to remove uterine polyps & just generally scrape off the uterine lining), and leptospirosis. Cool huh?

Unfortunately, I also heard a father ask the doctor whose life comes first, the mother or the baby, after a tragic loss of a child delivered at 33 weeks. It seemed that he wanted to be sure that his baby mattered to the doctors. Yet both parents were amazingly calm. I can't imagine the pain they had gone through, and I also can't help but wonder if that baby might have survived if it had been born in the US. It seems that at 33 weeks it should have had a fighting chance. That's just a fleeting thought though, because the wonder won't change the facts. Never dwell on the "what if"s. It's going to suck to someday face a patient's family and explain to them why I couldn't save their loved one. Yet I'm not God, and everyone can't be saved. Think there's any chance that knowing that will make it any easier? ha

Another amazing thing about this hospital visit is a more complete awareness of the conditions. For my last visit I spent the morning in the nice cool OR, and then went to the internal medicine ward, that, albeit was different from what I've seen before since it was all one big room with probably at least 30 beds. This time the lack of air conditioning, or even window screens, followed me around. The heat almost made me pass out in the morning. When I started to see dark spots I had to interrupt the doctor & sit down. At least, I'm assuming it had to be the heat. It was just so weird because I've only ever passed out once in my life. Then in the afternoon, the internal medicine ward was so packed that day that there were extra beds lining the middle aisle. While we were interviewing our patient, a guy 2 beds down had a mask put over his face (hopefully he wasn't the Tb patient I had heard was in the hospital), and the guy in the next bed was coughing & spitting stuff up into a basin on the floor between his bed & our patient's bed. Awesome.

Alright, back to studying for Monday's mini 2.