06.28.05

Medical Voyeurism, Part II

Posted in Uncategorized at 6:25 pm by Perry

I just spent that day shadowing a surgeon at Children’s Medical Center here in Dayton, Ohio.  The surgeon is a good friend of mine who I have know since I was only a small boy.  In fact, he has been my scoutmaster through the Boy Scouts for many years and was the person who oversaw me getting my Eagle Scout Award.  Dr. Charles Dru Goodwin, M.D., a.k.a. “Doc”, invited me to come shadow him for a day after I finally today him that I was planning on going into medicine; an offer I simply could not refuse.

I arrived at the hospital at around 7:30 a.m. and was shown to the physician’s locker room where I was able to change into medical scrubs.  I then sat in with all the attending physicians, residents, and interns as they went over each case for the day.  I would have felt terribly out of place except for the fact that another pre-medical student from Miami University who also knew Doc was shadowing him the same day I was.  My apprehensions of being overly interactive seemed to be unsubstantiated because the physicians were more than willing to listen to me and answer all of my questions. 

The first surgery of the day was a inguinal hernia repair.  The child was eleven and had had one of his testicles ascend into the abdomen.  Next, we saw the cutest kid I have ever seen, an eleven year old boy, have his lateral thorax incised.  The surgeons cut through tissue, fat, muscle, and fascia to completely retract the intercostal space between ribs five and six.  The child has an abnormal growth on a lobe of his left lung that had to be removed.  The incision was large and deep enough that I was able to see the lung, heart, diaphragm, and underlying tissue.  None the less, I couldn’t help but cringe in sadness seeing something so invasive be done to such a young beautiful child.

The final case before lung was a circumcision for a thirteen year old obese boy.  The whole procedure was fare too painful to recall so please, do not ask me about it.  It was the only time all day that I actually gasped in horror when they…well, you know.  The final surgery was a laparoscopic biopsy of the left inferior angle of the liver.  In contrast to the days previous experiences there was no gaping whole and the young, but quite large, child walked away with only three quarter inch scars.  The whole procedure was done with cameras and motorized blades that were navigated with internal cameras displayed on multiple screens in the operating room. 

The last part of the day was spend following Doc through his daily round of pre and post-op patients in his private clinic.  The whole experience of surgery was quite different from anything I have ever experienced in medicine before.  I had already ruled out any real interest in pursuing a residency in surgery and am still pretty sure that I will never go that route; it just doesn’t offer what I am looking for in medicine.  None the less, it was an eye opening experience that taught me a lot.  This whole summer is proving to be a great learning experience for me and I just hope that it continues at this rate.

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