My name is Danelle Wilson and I have a problem. I like all specialties! How am I going to decide? I always saw myself as a pediatrician, but then I was wooed by general surgery. And now I'm thinking "I totally want to be an Ob/Gyn." It's going to be very hard to choose a residency if I end up liking every specialty. I guess next month on my Peds rotation will be the moment of truth. Maybe I like Ob/Gyn so much because of the baby part.
Even though Ob/Gyn focuses on a small area, the specialty is so vast. You get to make patient connections and see women of all ages throughout their lives. You follow a pregnancy and then get to be the first hands to welcome that life into the world. You get to perform surgeries and can actually make problems better. You're not just treating symptoms which is very satisfying. I have learned so much during this rotation. It was a great combination of patient care and surgery, clinic time and hospital time. I really like the diversity.
My attending was a super cool guy! He is from Argentina and completed medical school there before moving to Chicago to complete an American Residency program. It's real interesting the difference between the two countries. In Argentina, you don't go to college. At 18 you start medical school. The first two years are in classroom and then the next three are in hospital. And then you're an attending. There is no residency. So at age 23 he was a full fledged doctor. And the best part? It's all free! You don't pay for medical school in Argentina. I'm very jealous of that fact. Anyways, he was really funny and joked around a lot. He said he could get away with it because of his accent.
Delivering the babies, when things went right, was awesome. But when things went wrong, they went really wrong really fast. Unfortunately I saw miscarriages, fetal demise, and birth defects. I had one day being on call that was just awful. I went from a miscarriage to an emergency C-section for a 29 week old fetus of a teenager who already had 3 kids not in her custody. This poor baby did not have a very good chance of survival and was immediately airlifted to Children's Hospital in Denver. After the C-section we delivered a baby who immediately went through withdrawal since mom did heroin during the pregnancy. The inconsolable cry of a baby was just heart breaking. The worst part of the call shift though was an inter-uterine demise (IUD). This means that for reasons we don't know, the baby's heart just stops beating. At 38 weeks a lady came to the ER saying she hadn't felt her baby move all day. She was declared IUD and an induction of labor was begun. It was the hardest labor I've been a part of. This woman, who had done everything right, had a healthy baby one minute and lost it the next. She then had to give birth knowing she wasn't going home with a baby. I was really proud of myself for not crying during the process but boy did I lose it later that night. It was a really bad day and extremely difficult to get through. That day was full of so much sadness. I was just hit with it back to back to back.
Luckily that day wasn't the norm. And the good definitely outweighed the bad. One of my favorite surgeries was placing a bladder sling. This woman was having a problem with incontinence for years and it was really making her miserable. Using a super long, curved needle attached to a mesh ribbon, you thread it under the pubic bone and up through the abdomen. The woman came for her follow up the next week and she cried because she was so happy with the fix. I also had some pretty interesting...finds... You'd be surprised what people stick up there. I thought about starting a diary. I would begin with Dear Diary, today I pulled a bag of cocaine out of a woman's vajayjay. Another entry would be 'today I pulled a Polly Pocket out of a little girl's "secret hole"' Her mom threatened to take it away if she didn't behave so she hid it. Another treasure found was cloves of garlic. The lady read on the internet that it would cure what ailed her. FYI - it won't. Don't Do It! Other gems were carrots and sex toys. All in all very interesting. It appears there is a need for a list titled "Things that Don't Belong in Your Vagina".
Anyway...I loved this past month and am super excited for the next!
1 comment:
Doctor Danielle, looks like you are getting the most out of each rotation and have had great attendings, too. Worked with OB/GYNs for over 20 years (as office manager) and I understand the draw of OB/GYN. I'm one of the Chapter AJ P.E.O. women and very excited that you are doing so well in medical school and enjoying it. Will be great to see what specialty you choose in the end.
Love your writing style and the recap of each rotation.
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