Today was fairly interesting. Our first patient took 3 hours. She was a morbidly obese wheel-chair ridden woman with diabetes and she had a major ulcer (about as big as my palm) on her lower buttock by her vagina and one of her labia had a lot of sores, from when she has self-catheterized herself. The surgical solution was to remove the middle portion of both labia (they have to match) and cut a flap, cauterize the big sore, and cover it with skin. Her labia were gigantic, each one was about as wide as my arm. This was, again, due to extreme obesity. After three hours everyone was pretty sick of the case.
The second one was a gallbladder surgery, open (not laparoscopic) because the gallbladder was actually a "porcelain" gallbladder, a term to mean that the gallbladder has calcified. There were also significant stones in it, and it was chalk white (hence the name). Normally it is rather radiopaque, but the radiologist make any major comments about it, so it was missed initially until the first attempt at a laparoscopic repair. Once it was out, it was rock hard - and the walls were pretty thick. Inside instead of the typical greenish-yellow bile, there was this light yellow fluid, probably mostly cholesterol.
The next two cases were lumpectomies for breast cancer, not much to say about that. Didn't really get to do any suturing today, but tomorrow there is one surgery - a leg incision and drainage, because it is a cellulitis case (most likely). Had to buy some thank you cards today, and should get some studying, but a friend is coming to stay with us for a week so I shall be very preoccupied with fun social stuff.
No comments:
Post a Comment