Third Rotation: Surgery

My third rotation was Surgery in Spokane, Washington (9/12/07 - 12/21/07). I LOVED SURGERY, and I worked with some amazing surgeons who were uniformly awesome teachers. I would love to be a surgeon, but for the hours. Even with "posh" hours, these guys are in the hospital just about every day rounding on their patients, at the very least. I need time to go on my adventures, so it just wouldn't work for me. But what I learned is that I LOVE PROCEDURES, and I'll get a ton of that in the ED. Yup, Surgery is the BOMB. This is a pretty boring post, though, because I was far from home and there wasn't much going on, and there aren't many pics. Sorry...

The housing was sort o' cheesy, but it was very close to the hospitals, so I liked it for that reason. We each had a garage, which apparently was a good thing because of the many break-ins at this complex. My apartment was the one on the top right, and the other student, Jacob, was the bottom apartment.


Jacob Henderson is a really chill, cool guy who also enjoys wine excessively, is into triathlons, and lives for his patients. He wants to do Pediatric Oncology, and he will be perfect for it. Very cool guy. I was lucky to be paired with him for this rotation.

A few days before the rotation started, I was invited to the Washington Chapter of the ACEP's annual leadership conference with all of the EM directors in the State. I was invited for my legal expertise. It was a great honor and an amazing opportunity to meet some people who are very influential in the field. I was VERY LUCKY to be allowed to fly back for the day to attend this conference.

The other nice thing about Spokane was that it was close to my sister and her family, so I got to see Wendy, Phil, Tayor, and Parker several times while I was there. That was great. I also got out for a hike one day with Wendy. It was so good to just have some relaxed alone time with my sister. That hasn't happened in I don't know how long. I'll be so happy when my training is over and I can have more of those times with family and friends. I feel like a slave to this at times, even though I wouldn't change a thing.
Oh, I almost forgot!!! I got to play hockey a few times with a women's league while in Spokane. I scored a bunch of goals, and they gave me an "honorary puck" as a gift, which was cool. I had a blast out on the ice. I had forgotten how much I love it and what a great workout it is! I haven't played since Seth and I were on the league in Augusta.


I am going to have to get into another league. The first night I play on open stick time, and then in a women's league game after that. I ended up playing for like 3 hours straight, and the first two were without line changes! I was so sweaty you could wring my "super wicking" clothes out at the end. I was also very sore the next day, but decided that I was on track for getting back in shape, so I started going to the YMCA and I did a bunch of workouts with 4 miles on the treadmill, weight lifting, and then a fast half mile swim. I think I lost about six pounds of CHUNCK on this rotation. I'm slowly getting back to being me again. I'm so happy to be on clinical rotations. This is a MILLION TIMES BETTER than the pre-clinical years.