I know this post is a weekend late, but as they say, better late than never. Last week was a very busy week filled with surgeries and of course, one of my favorite holidays, St. Patrick's Day. The weekend started off with a Friday early morning surgery for a wart removal.
Most of us have probably had a plantar wart or known someone that has had one. The patient we operated on the Friday before St. Patrick's Day had a colony of warts. Yes, thats right people, 2/3's of his heel was covered in these little pests, and for him, they were so painful he could not walk on them. So after trying a bunch of other non surgical options, we decided to take him to the OR and laser them off. The patient is put under and we numb up the area and basically draw a circle around were the wart colony is. Once that is done, we remove the top layer of skin from the deeper layer of skin (this is to prevent the patient from having a big scar on his heel later on down the road.) Once that is done, we take the laser again and burn that entire area, which helps to kill the wart virus. I had the opportunity to not only give the patient the local block before we started surgery (translated, I gave him a needle with a bunch of numbing medication in it) but I also got to practicing my coloring skills and "colored" (aka, burned the patient) within the circle area the doctor drew around the warts with the laser. Thats the first time I have ever used the laser and it was a pretty cool experience. I am interested to see how our patient does when he starts to heal. I did get to see the patient last week and he said that the area felt a lot better than it did before surgery, which is always good to hear.
Surgical Laser
On another day, I got to do a punch biopsy. What is that you say? Well, I basically hole punched someone. In the medical field, we often do a punch biopsy to a small area in the skin that looks suspicious for skin cancer. Our patient that came in had a very small mole on the top of his foot, and even though it had been there his whole life, the color did not look quite right to us. So, we take this little hole punch, and punch out the area and send it to a lab to make sure it is in-fact, not cancerous. (and for those of you that are wondering, we numb up the patient first, we dont just go ahead a hole punch you without numbing medication, unless you are a problem patient.....J/K) Since we are making a hole in the patients skin, we have to suture him back up. (Translation: suture= medical term for stitches) I was allowed to put the suture in, and thats the first time I have gotten to throw a suture in a live patient, so of course, I was excited about that.
I also scrubbed in (translation: meaning I was dressed in sterile gloves and gowns so I was allowed to touch the patient and help with the surgery) on another Austin bunionectomy. (See previous post for description of that) During that surgery I helped the surgeon and the resident with instruments, retracting the skin back so that they can see, passing instruments and just helping out any way I can. It was the first time since I have been scrubbing that I have felt comfortable in the OR and man what a good feeling that was. This world is not so much a foreign place anymore!! I also got to throw another suture in the patient, which was my first OR suture......its the little things in life people!! So thats what the surgery world has had instore for me for the past few weeks.
In other news, we were finally able to take part in the Cleveland St. Patrick's Day traditions. St. Patrick's Day is huge here due to the stellar Irish Catholic population. They shut down downtown and have a huge parade, the bars open up at 5 am, and there is music and beer and its a good time. Except for the fact that it was 75 degrees and sunny that day, so EVERYONE..and I mean EVERYONE from the greater Cleveland area was downtown. Needless to say, we didnt get to see the parade because we couldnt get close enough. Don't worry though, we improvised and went to The Great Lakes Brewing Station for one too many Irishmen Ales before heading back to our part of town. Once we got back, we walked up to our local watering hole where, alas, we found what we had been looking for all day...GREEN BEER!!!
Clockwise from the top left: Gemma and I on the way to the parade, our green beer, downtown Cleveland, this wasnt even the crowded part.
The day ended with us being able to have our green ale's outside. All in all it was a good day spent with many of my good friends here in the big CLE.
Clockwise from top left: Irishmen Ale, The English Family rocking our new sunglasses our favorite waitress gave us, the old beer truck out front of Great Lakes Brewery, the Cleveland Skyline.
I think that is all the exciting news I have for now. All my other free time is spent working on stuff for the wedding (28 days..WOOP WOOP!) reviewing information for surgeries and watching reality tv:) Until next time,
xoxo
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