One month down, eleven to go. That seems like such a long time, but it is flying by so fast. I am already halfway done with my second rotation. In one month, I have learned so much more about the profession that I will be doing for a good portion of my life. Being able to do hands-on work is really the only way to fully understand something. For example, I studied Spanish for 9 years of schooling, starting in high school. I had thought that I knew how to speak the language pretty well until I actually went to Spain. I was so overwhelmed those first few days, that I didn't know if I was going to be able to continue on. I quickly learned that wasn't the case, and I knew more than I thought. I just had to adapt and adjust. That's what this year is all about. It's all about immersing yourself in the profession and soaking up any information and techniques that you can while on the job.
I am the king of appendixes and gallbladders. My first rotation was a Children's hospital in Pittsburgh. My 3 weeks there flew by in the blink of an eye. It was a great location for me to begin. The pace there is slower (at least it was for me) and I was able to take my time and not feel pressured. There were a lot of simple specimens to gross, and only a few complex cases. The complex cases that do come down are really interesting because you may not see it in a "normal" adult hospital. The typical specimens I saw were skin biopsies and excisions, lots and lots of appendixes and gallbladders, soft tissue masses/cysts, stomas, placentas, testicles, breast reductions for gender changes, right hemi-colectomies, total colectomy, and a lot of biopsies. The most interesting specimen I had was a partial hepatectomy for a liver transplant. Overall, I really enjoyed my rotation here. I was able to solidify my basic grossing techniques and become efficient with the technology. It was a great stepping stone for the rest of the year.
I had a lot of downtime at my rotation at Children's hospital, which allowed me to study for our exam that we have at the end of each month. I still could have studied more, as I did not do as well as I had needed to. The exams are 100 questions, multiple choice. For these first few exams, we are given objectives as a guideline of what to study. The range of information is vast. It basically includes everything that we learned in the past year. It includes chapters from our physiology book, anatomy, cpt codes, staging, staining, autopsy, histology, grossing techniques, and more. Each exam is basically a final exam in order to prepare us for our certification tests. Coming home after working all day sure is difficult to get the motivation to study. I am going to use the results of this first exam to give me motivation to study more and harder for this next one and so forth.
I am currently finishing the second week of a three week rotation performing autopsies at a medical examiner's office in Cleveland. I am staying at a really nice airbnb for this stay. I recommend that for this rotation as it is very hard to find a place to stay for 3 weeks. This is a brand new rotation this year, so I'm kind of like a guinea pig. I'm still not sure how it's going to be graded and we are just winging things, but so far this rotation is incredibly interesting. The difference between this facility and a hospital autopsy facility is that the cases we work on are from either homicides, suicides, suspicious deaths, and some family requests. Most of the people that come in die from drug overdoses. I've also seen a lot of car accident victims and gunshot victims. The first couple of days I spent observing, but I was soon performing the autopsies with a lot of guidance. There are 3-4 pathologists working on the floor each day, and they rotate with many other pathologists each day. The techs do the evisceration (which I have been mostly doing) and the pathologists gross the organs. I try to work on the cases that I won't see in a hospital setting, and I'm learning something new every day. With guidance, I can now perform an autopsy from start to finish, even if it's not the fastest. The first day we had 17 autopsies and were incredibly busy, but then there are days like yesterday where we only had one total. So some days we get done really early and I study in the office. At 3 pm, the pathologists get together and discuss the findings of the day. I always attend these and learn so much from them. There is also an opportunity to sit in on court cases and/or go to a homicide site, although I have yet to do either of these. I have one week left of this rotation and then it is off to Butler, Pennsylvania, where I will be the only PA there. Yikes!
Outside of the rotations, I haven't done much! I tend to hibernate in the winter and just wish it would disappear. I did meet up with a friend I haven't seen since sophomore year of college who lives in Pittsburgh, and he introduced me to his friends group. I have friends now! This may sound like a really lame thing to say, but with me moving around every year and being an adult, it's hard to make friends outside of school. So I am pretty excited about that. I went to the Carnegie Science Center one night for a "Breaking Bad" themed event, and I've been to a couple of breweries. This weekend, I plan on going to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with a friend that is coming to visit me. Other than that, life pretty much consists of the clinical rotations, studying, and staying warm during the week.