General Surgery W2D5 (w/ Dr. Ou)

Dr. Ou invited his friend to give a presentation about what I thought was going to be esophageal cancer surgeries. I might have heard incorrectly or maybe the presentation just ended up being something different. Dr. Ou's friend presented more about surgery trends, standards, and doctors. I felt the presentation was more of an inspirational speech than a lecture. This may be partly attributed to the fact that I was sleep deprived and didn't understand a decent amount of what was being said, but the powerpoint slides had English. The presenter talked about the necessary characteristics of a surgeon such as hand-eye coordination, vision depth, tactile feedback, and more. He also gave a more poetic depiction of surgeons as having eagle's eye, lion's heart, girl's fingers, scholar's investigation, and teamwork. From my understanding of the presentation, I believe the lecturer was trying to say how talented surgeons are and how difficult it must be to have all these different characteristics. However, like medicine, surgery is constantly evolving and changing for the better. Surgeons must continue to stay up-to-date with methods and techniques to better serve their patients. The lecturer mentioned that new methods always seem radical at first but become "obvious" or common sense in the future. Thus, surgeons must keep an open mind towards innovation.

After the mornings lecture, I was able to observe a laproscopic surgery for a patient who had an abscess around the large intestine + ileum junction. This abscess has caused great discomfort to the patient and led to physical wasting of their body. The pain is localized to the right lower quadrant but the appendix was removed years ago. Thus, the pain is assumed to be something else. The CTs show a mass filled with fluid near the cecum. The surgery was initially performed using 3 holes, 1 for the laproscope and 2 for surgical tools. During the procedure, the physicians ran across many peritoneal adhesions because of prior surgeries and illnesses. This made it difficult to access and excise the afflicted area. The abscess was in a very delicate area, surrounded by adhesions, and simply split open during the operation. Consequently, the surgeons created a larger incision into the abdomen to get a better general view of the area and to take out a larger portion of the colon. In the end, they cut out part of the large and small intestine and attached the remaining ends of the GI tract to one another.

After a week of observing surgery, I feel like a new spark of interest has been lit in my medical ambitions. I have considered surgery in the past, but that's all it was, a consideration. The performance under pressure is something I have always appreciated, but the level of skill needed with mind and body make being a doctor much more respectable. Now, I feel like surgery may be a desirable path for me in the future as well.