Once The Air Hits Your Brain, You are Never Quite the Same.


The Anesthesia rotation ended with a bang this last week. I spent the last two days seeing as many neurosurgery cases as possible, and running in and out of different ORs doing as many intubations as possible [in laymen's terms, "intubating" someone means sticking a big plastic tube down a person's trachea and connecting it to a ventilator ... while the patient is anesthetized, mind you]. I'm finally getting the hang of it ... which is a good thing since I'll probably have to do a lot of intubating if I decide to do ER.

But ... truth be told, neurosurgery is hot. Damn hot. They use so many ridiculously cool toys. They usually start the cases using a laser sensor which analyzes the topography of a person's face and can then be used incombination with MRI/CT scans to make/guide exceedingly precise incisions thru a person's skull. The tools they use are both cool and horrific. I was in a case in which I got to see Maggie [who's on neurosurg right now] drill a hole in a person's head ... she looked like she was having too much fun.

I can't wait to be on neurosurg.

I start Trauma Surgery on Monday, so things from here on out are going to be... well, rough. From the looks of it, there will not be a moment of respite until December when I go home from break. On one hand, I'm utterly terrified, on the other hand, I'm exceedingly excited to ramp up the intensity and bust my a$$. I get a strangly euphoric and almost addictive feeling from working hard and being fully absorbed in what I do. My goal, for the rest of the surgery rotation, is to enter precisely this Zone where, well frankly, I become neurotic and extremely disciplined in all aspects of my life. It should be fun ... until December. And then I can stop, chill out, and behave again like a normal person.