Well, I've definitely fallen off updating in the past few weeks...maybe even a month! But there was Thanksgiving, the last two weeks of a hectic rotation, a giant summative exam (which I passed!), packing up and coming home for the holidays, and preparing for the holidays and celebrating numerous birthdays at home this week, so I've been busy!
The last few weeks of neurosurgery were great, though. I really liked all the PAs that I worked with! And I did get to go into the OR and see two more surgeries - a cranioplasty (putting pieces of skull back in that had been taken out previously, in this case for a patient who had been in an accident and who had had skull pieces taken out so his brain could swell and not get too cramped against the skull, which can cause damage) and a lumbar decompression (basically taking out bone spurs and arthritic changes in the lower spine to alleviate pressure on nerves and therefore back/leg pain). I got to scrub in (finally!!) on that last surgery, and even retract/suction/do staples at the end. So that was cool! Other than that, it was more of the same type of inpatient care that I've already talked about a lot.
So, I'm on break for about two more weeks, then it's back to Pittsburgh for a rotation in internal medicine! Sounds like it will be lots of management of chronic conditions, so nothing too exciting or fast-paced at all, but I'm sure I will learn a lot. I hope so, anyway!
Hope everyone has a very happy holiday season! :)
