Happy Birthday Amanda!

So it's a few hours early, but I wanted to post and wish my wonderful former roommate a very happy 25th birthday!

I am currently doing general surgery. I have a pretty good team, and our service isn't as crazy as some, but I'm rapidly getting tired of laproscopic surgery. The med students appear to have two roles during laproscopy:
1) Drive the camara-- the most thankless job ever. No one praises you for doing things right, but the second you let the camera drift so that the image isn't perfectly centered on the screen or you angle the camera a few degrees off, your attending snaps at you. I have dreams in which someone is saying, "Center-- center the camera! Come in closer-- no, move back. Follow me! Center!"
2) Do absolutely nothing-- During the so-called "advanced laproscopic" cases, the attending or a senior resident will drive the camera, and the med student is left to watch the screen while trying not to pass out or fall asleep.

However, on the plus side, I do think I have found something I could see myself doing for the rest of my life: Orthopedic Surgery. In my last post, I gushed about my wonderful sports rotation. Since then, I also did a two week ortho hand rotation. I really enjoyed those weeks because I got to do a ton during the clinics (I can do a pretty good carpal tunnel exam now), was able to see a ton of surgeries, and even got to do my own small operating room case at the end of the rotation. The people were also great-- the residents, fellows, and attendings joked around with me and teased me unmercifully, but at the same time, they definitely made me feel like a useful part of the group. Anyway, ortho is definitely a possibility right now. The two potential downsides are that it's a very competitive field and the time commitment of any surgery field would make it hard for me to pursue a secondary career in medical education. I guess I'll know a little more about what I'm going to do when I grow up in another few months after I rotate through some other services that I consider potential careers (i.e. internal medicine or psych or peds.)

For now, though, I better get back to reading about general surgery. Hope everyone's work and school life is going well :)