Surgery Update

It is official, I am observing at least three orthopedic surgeries Thursday!!! I am excited as well as frightened that I will pass out or do something else to embarrass myself. Wish me luck.

Surgery

I am currently on a clinical rotation at a hospital, working on the orthopedic floor. My clinical instructor is going to set up a surgical observation for me with one of the orthopedic surgeons. I am super excited! Soon, I will get to see bones a-crack'n and joint replacements! Yeah!!!! I should be able to spend all day following the surgeon from surgery to surgery. So, hopefully I will get to be in on a couple different types of surgeries. Wish me luck!

News

Joe has accepted and offer for an associate programmer job at ANPAC. I thought that we should update everyone.

Oh, and I will be spending 7 weeks in California this upcoming semester. One of my clinicals is going to be in Woodland. Dates to follow...

More on my clinical

With my clinical coming to a close, I thought that I would update everyone on some of the tangential things I have learned while at the hospital:

--strippers really do fall off of their poles
--propane explosions=bad
--meth ages you in a yucky way

Money Isn't Everything

My clinical instructor and I worked with a patient and his family who were clearly loaded. During one session with them we "taught" them how to do transfers from the fanciest wheelchair I have ever seen into a brand new Mercedes SUV.

Even with the overflow of money however, these people lacked something that they needed in their current situation: motivation. Without it, the patient will never get any better, and no one in the family will push for it. I just wanted to shake them.

At least I have a family that would push me.

Clinicals

I started my second clinical experience on Monday at St. John's hospital here in Springfield. I am working in the inpatient rehab department and I have really enjoyed most everything about being there. My only complaint is that there are way more bodily fluids to be dealt with this clinical than the last one I went on.

Since I can't share a lot of details about the patients I am seeing, patient confidentiality and all, I thought that I would instead share other random unrelated facts that I learn throughout my two weeks in the hospital. In the last two days I have accumulated the following tidbits of knowledge (along with the source from which I acquired them):

**Drinking alcohol shrinks your testicles and decreases testosterone production --from a doctor to a patient

**When they put staples into you, often, you are awake and not numbed in the slightest --nurse practitioner

**If you need staples while in the hospital, they will order you personally a stapler, which is then your stapler --nurse practitioner

**To desensitize a amputation stump you should "slap it around a bit" --a patient

Harrison, Arkansas

I am in the lovely and not particularly entertaining town of Harrison, Arkansas. The classmate I am with and I are stuffed full of the best Mexican food I have had since coming to the Midwest (yeah for the fabulous tamale), but I have a feeling that we peaked early with our post work activities...we'll see...