2010

Happy New Year! I have been quite a blogging slacker. I have realized that it is just not that easy to maintain blogging as it was as a medical student.

Anyway, I had a nice December full of elective time and vacation. I still need to post my Hawaii pictures. We have yet to get them onto the computer! I spent my work days working on medical education materials for medical students on the Hematology rotation, looking at interesting Hemepath cases, and generally leaving by 5 pm every day. Life was great. In very exciting new we got a Wii for Christmas and that has been sucking away tons of our time. I am playing Zelda and remembering why I loved this series of games so much as a kid/teen.

Now I am back on surgicals. At least I am at the county hospital, so the workload is a bit lighter and the atmosphere more mellow. It is nice to have a different type of caseload as well. Instead of the zebras and the hours of grossing in tumor after tumor, I am actually seeing more of the variety that one would see in the typical private practice job--appendices, gallbladders, bowel resections not for cancer, skin, GI biopsies, etc.

Of course, being county we also get our share of things one would rarely see in private practice: organs with stab wounds, bowel resections for gunshot wounds where we hunt for the bullets, and, everyone's favorite, objects extracted from body cavities. According to the PA, the most dramatic objects ever extracted were 3 softballs.... I will go no further to keep this PG-13....

The Haiti situation is just heartbreaking. Partners in Health has been my choice for donations. Other than that it is frustrating feeling like I cannot do much more to help. CAP, the national pathologist organization, sent out an email addressing this for pathologists, suggesting that we can get involved in re-building hospital laboratory facilities once things are a bit more under control there. What a tragedy.