Neurosurgery Week and Halloween Festivities

I've finally recovered from the most exhausting week of third year yet! Today's been a no-makeup, just-leaving-the-house-to-grab-coffee kind of day. My medical school has a 5 week neurology clerkship with 1 week of that spent on the neurosurgery service. Biggest take-home from this week? Residents and attending physicians alike spend A LOT of time in the hospital. And for one week, I got a glimpse of what it's like to be a neurosurgery resident.

 My days started at 4 AM. I got dressed, did my makeup (forget hair - it was under a scrub cap all day anyways), ate breakfast, and NEVER left without a thermos full of coffee. I left my apartment at 5 AM, and drove to the hospital where I met up with the residents at 5:30 AM for morning sign-out. The residents went over each of the patients and discussed what needed to be done for each of them. Next, around 6 AM, we visited all the patients, asked a few questions and quickly examined them. We finished seeing patients around 7 AM and headed down to the hospital cafe for breakfast (except I could never wait that long to eat so I just chatted with the residents and my friend who was on neurosurgery the same week I was - yay!). Around 7:30 AM, we headed to the OR to scrub-up and prep our patients who were going into surgery. Surgeries were usually scheduled for 8 AM and lasted anywhere from 11 AM to 2 PM. I'm sure there are some that last even longer than that, but the longest one I attended finished up around 2 PM! I frequently had classes throughout the day so I would have to scrub-out and check back in afterwards. Most of the days were spent in surgery with the occasional formal lecture mixed in. My first day, I was on call so I didn't end up leaving the hospital until 8 PM, but other days I got out anywhere between 5 PM and 7PM. I would read up on the patients scheduled for surgery the following day, eat dinner, shower, and occasionally fit in some snippets of reading or U World questions before passing out. It was definitely a long week.

PROS:
- These are some insanely amazing surgeries! I loved the craniotomies I got to scrub into and the neurosurgeons that I worked with were so dedicated to teaching students. I learned a lot and even got to try my hand at placing a lumbar drain. Try being the key word because I ended up handing it off to the resident who maneuvered it for about 5 minutes before getting it positioned. Not the easiest tap, but a great opportunity for me!
- The days were fast-paced and exciting most of the time. Anything can happen during surgery and even some of the "routine" surgeries had some unforeseen complications.

CONS:
- Lifestyle. These doctors just don't stop. They are some of the most dedicated people I've ever met, but that also translates into very long hours without much sleep or down-time. I personally can't imagine making it through the 7-year residency and then continuing to work the only slightly shorter workdays of the attending physicians.
- Stress. It's there all the time while doing such delicate surgeries. The brain and the spinal cord don't have room for error and so nobody has tolerance for mistakes. This makes for some pretty tense moments in the OR.

I really ended up enjoying my week and didn't mind the early mornings all that much. By Friday though, I was relieved to be able to catch up on sleep!

Halloween and the weeks leading up to it seemed to fly by! We were able to put together a couple's costume last-minute and enjoy some time with friends last night. The reference may be a bit obscure, but we had fun with it :) This week should be a bit more leisurely on the neurology consult service and with a low-key weekend ahead!