Home stretch...with home threads!!

Posing in one of my new scrub caps!

The Orthopaedic Service blew up over the weekend!  There were alot of cases that were admitted yesterday and are already financially clear for surgery, so it looks like I may go out with a bang this week.  I found out today that Friday is a national holiday-Armed Forces Day-so looks like Wednesday will be my last day in the OR here unless there's some crazy emergency.  Today was probably the latest day yet for me in the hospital.  When I found out that my operative week would be cut short, I started adding on cases to the schedule so I could knock out as much as possible.  I had a couple of tibia and femur fractures come in, one floating knee (a fracture of the femur and tibia in the same leg...) transferred in from another hospital, a bad acetabular fracture (but I probably won't get to it because she has blood in her chest), a guy with chrnoic osteomyelitis in his entire leg who will need an above-knee amputation, a guy who had a horrible forearm injury/fracture after being shot, one guy with a humerus fracture nonunion who needs bone grafting after being treated by "herbie", a little girl with a spine tumor that left her paraplegic, another girl with a myelomeningocele (her spinal cord is protruding from her back.).  It never stops here!  There is so much work to be done...

I will actually be going to the OR tomorrow even though it's not my scheduled day to do so.  My amputation patient is regressing and needs to go for a surgical debridement.  I feel so bad for her because I'm not going to be around to follow up her care.  I want to at least jump on top of this infection early so it doesn't get too far out of hand after I'm gone.  It is becoming quite tough on her family as well.  Everyday her home is packed with people.  The nurses have continually needed to limit her visitors-she only wants to see select people at this time. 

Always smiling...and being silly!

I was really tired today and had to keep moving around in between cases because if I sat down I knew that it would be a wrap for me.  I stopped watching the Superbowl around the 3rd quarter and went home, but it was still rather late for me so I wasn't quite running on all cylinders today.  I finally got around to doing that patient I mentioned previously with  the old femur fracture.  I was hoping that everything would go smoothly and he wouldn't lose much blood.  Turned out to be easier than I expected because his bones were so malpositioned that there wasn't much healing, which made it easy to manipulate his leg.  I pushed the envelope today with all of the cases and was able to start the last case after 3pm-which is not the norm.  They were being a little more lenient because they know I'm leaving soon...I'm gonna try and go for a long day on Wednesday-I potentially have 7 or 8 cases to bang out!!  Better pack lunch...

I wore one of my scrub caps today-everyone loved it!!  They were all like "where'd you get that from Dr. Balah?!!!"  The tailor really did a good job-I'm going to call him tomorrow to make some more before I head back...

I'm really beat right about now and have to get some sleep.  I think my week may continue to get busier as the days go by, so I better call it a night.  Hope everyone had a good day.

"What we are is God's gift to us.  What we become is our gift to God."
-Eleanor Powell