Week 7

This week was filled with babies! First, Lina and I together watched a preplanned Cesarean (C-section) surgery where an incredible cute 7 lb, 7 oz baby boy was born. The baby was in a breached position, meaning he was butt first rather than head first, and I suspected this is why the mother had to have a C-section. In the procedure they first made about a 6 inch incision into the woman’s lower stomach, cut through the tissues and linings of the uterus, cut into the uterus and removed the baby through an incision that looked only slightly bigger than the baby’s head. The doctor’s then pull out the placenta, sew the uterus shut, and close up the woman. Separately, the baby is cleaned up, they cut his umbilical cord, fingerprint his feet for identification, weigh him, and wrap in blankets for the parents to hold. The whole procedure takes under an hour, and the baby was out of the mother in only about 10 minutes.

Also this week I was able to go on rounds in the Neonatal ICU (NICU) with Dr. Jeffrey Perlman and a team of residents. Luckily, most of the babies in the NICU are not very sick and will have a healthy recovery. Most of them were born prematurely, and there are lots of twins. The doctors just want to watch them, help them gain weight, and make sure they are healthy before they are sent home. They teach the parents how to handle a preemie baby specifically. Unfortunately, there were two babies I saw in the NICU that did not fit this description. One full-term baby underwent a difficult delivery, so they doctors wanted to watch him for possible brain damage. Another baby was born with a heart defect and was in the NICU until she could have surgery.

This week I also had the chance to shadow doctors in the emergency department (ED). First, I went to the “Urgent Care” department which was very different from what its name implies. Here, I followed a 4^th year medical student who performed sutures on a woman’s cut wrist and identified a cornea scratch for a patient with eye redness and pain. For a woman coming in with tooth pain, the doctors prescribed antibiotics and pain medication, and arranged a dentist’s appointment for the next day. Overall, not the most interesting cases I’ve ever seen. After a few hours I went on to shadow a resident in Area A and observed the hustle and bustle of an ED that I expected. I was shocked at the significant number of patients they were able to accommodate at one time: two patients per room along with people on beds lining the walkway. However, it just seemed like everyone was running around crazy at all times. The patients I did see with my resident was an older man with ankle pain and edema and a woman who fell, possibly had a seizure, and needed to be examined for broken bones or internal injuries. The most interesting case was an older man with a history of bladder cancer and diabetes, had a recent kidney transplant, and now possibly has congestive heart failure or pneumonia, but no one could tell for sure what was wrong. They were worried about his high blood counts, glucose, potassium, creatinine, and urea. His stay in the ED was to simply take his counts and then admit him to an ICU within the hospital.