11.14.2012

Future Surgeon?

Sorry it has been so long since my last post! I am almost halfway through my second year of medical school, and it has been a wonderful, stressful, joyful, busy ride!  Over the past year, I have started leaning back towards my first love in medicine...surgery.  I switched from it because I did not want the "surgeon lifestyle," but the longer I am in medical school and the more experience I get with different fields of medicine, the more I feel drawn to surgery.  I figure, if that is what God has planned for me, that is where I want to be, no matter the cost! However, I am keeping an open mind as I continue my classes this year and begin thinking about my rotations in the hospital, which start at the end of the summer.

As a testament to my renewed love of surgery, I am the Secretary/Treasurer for a surgical interest group for MUSC's College of Medicine, STAR (Surgical Training, Awareness, and Residency).  This week, STAR hosted our first suture lab of the year, which we have dubbed "Pizza and Pigs' Feet." We serve soda and pizza before following the instructions of surgical residents who are kind enough to volunteer an hour or two of their limited free time to help us learn how to suture on pigs' feet bought from the local butcher.

This was my first attempt at suturing EVER, and I loved every second of it.  There were definite ups and downs as I tried to learn the proper grasp to use with the forceps and the hemostat, the correct angle to use with the curved suturing needle, and various different styles of suturing.  By the end of the lab, I was pretty proud of my results.  I got a friend and fellow medical student to snap a couple of pictures of me and my pig's foot, containing my first ever sutures...possibly the first of MANY more to come!

Different Suturing Techniques:

I attempted the simple (over and over) interrupted and continuous, the vertical mattress, the horizontal mattress, and the subcutaneous ("invisible") sutures! :)


Left incision (top to bottom): vertical mattress, horizontal mattress, simple continuous, simple interrupted
Right incision: subcutaneous