Ortho

I knew going into this that i didn't want to be a surgeon. Surgery is super-freaking cool, but i like my life. All residents work hard, but surgical residents are expected to graciously surpass most human limitations without really trying. They leave medskool and enter into the fiery furnace, and only emerge five years later. It is awesome to witness, but i cannot sacrifice my family and sell the better part of my 30's to do it.

So, I wanted a chill surgical rotation, and was less than thrilled to be assigned to a tough service in a hospital without digital x-rays.

Despite my expectations, it very much didn't suck. There were ample housestaff; and (impressively) they all shared the scut.

I'm not exactly in love with the OR, so i didn't see the staff very often, but i tried my best to carry my weight on the ward, and to deflect/deal with some of the minor stuff to make the days run well. And i got a lot of teaching in return. Especially on emerg-related topics -- like how to reduce a fracture, open fractures, and (surprisingly), brisk upper GI bleeds. I saw and assisted with a few total hip replacements, and saw a few minor trauma cases. I can see extremity fractures on x-ray, and know how to look for a shoulder dislocation (and got to reduce one of those too!). I can even classify ankle fractures to a certain extent.

And if nothing else, i was reminded of the blood supply to the hip, and the risk of avascular necrosis of the femoral head.

So, educationally it was good. But the most interesting was the gender analysis of it all.

Ortho is a manly-man specialty. There are certainly women in the field, but they still take a lot of crap, and mostly, it's men. And a higher-than-average proportion of very butch men. I don't usually think of myself as having a pronounced gender presentation. I don't identify as butch, and would even be out of place playing lesbian softball. That said, i'm equally out of place at a bridal shower or with a bunch of fags singing along to olivia newton john.

semi-androgynous library-geek maybe?

Anyways, once i'd changed into scrubs, and walked into the residents' lounge, my gender changed instantly. I have not felt so girly since at least high school. The legs i held in the OR were really heavy, i don't follow college football, i don't eat meat, and i really only hold one pint of beer when i'm out with colleagues. wow. I am 6 feet tall, i wear a size 11 shoe, and felt like the princess and the pea.

Until this rotation, i think i had also stopped believing in straight guys. And by "not believing" i'm not invoking some lesbian separatist utopia, more akin to not believing in the tooth fairy. I know a lot of guys who are heterosexual, but none who i would have considered straight -- guys who go to ani difranco concerts, guys who work in preschools, guys who date lesbians, guys who study ecofeminism, guys who change their name when they get married. Although they only sleep with women, they are hardly beholden to extremes of gender stereotypes.

And then i met the resident who i will call the Viking. Who disabused me of my pretentious notion that cis-gendered people could not be thinking folk who had examined their own performative gender AND fall to the extreme end of a gendered continuum (if there were such a thing). duh. I now believe in straight men. And if i ever lose another tooth it's going under my pillow.

(to be fair, i may have been one of the first poly bi-dyke mamas he'd ever met too. Call together was a bit like an intercultural surgical performance art workshop)

if people knew what their doctors were like in real life. . .

Geriatrics

I feel like i've been let off the ride, and i didn't throw up on anyone. phew.

The last (and more or less final!) two rotations were surprising. good-surprising.

Geriatrics was, predictably, slow-ish. Which was exactly what i wanted. I had tons of time to just talk with people, and to meet my own needs and then actually be available when i was supposed to be working. It was so pleasant, and then *I* was so pleasant! Patients kept remarking about how nice i was. Which i know is a defense strategy when folks are ill and vulnerable, but i also think it was because i honestly *am* nicer when i've slept, eaten, emptied my bladder and figured out that thing at the bank. And when i don't have to shoo people out of my presence because someone else is waiting. I could just, listen. And work at the pace people set for me.

One of the wisdom-chunks left for us this month was "whatever has taken 85 years to develop, will not be solved in an hour". which was a nice place to come from. (that said, the big challenge is discerning what has developed in the last hour, and really needs to be solved NOW)

I met some quality people, and had time to hear some of their stories, which is always my favorite part. It was kind of like, half internal medicine and half psych, which i figure is why i half really liked it. Fortunately, i happened to get a slow/light internal medicine half, which worked out well.

I got to do a little presentation on gay and lesbian seniors as part of the rotation, which was fun. Despite so much of the cool research on this topic having been done in the neighbourhood, none of them seemed aware of it. Which was both disappointing and lucky for me -- cuz i got to seem all fresh and up to date with information that had been sitting around the house for a few years. I learned a few things too -- like that after concentration camps in europe were liberated post- WWII, those detained for gay-ness had to finish their sentences elsewhere. I found that a bit chilling.

More soon on orthopedic surgery. and other stuff. cuz there is lots of other stuff. clerkship is ending, i am tasting glimpses of the time when i am no longer everybody's bitch.

power tools

I got to put a screw into someone's femur today with a very cool drill. How awesome is that?