This past Friday I had the day off, but decided to go to Memorial Hermann for my internship anyways. I know, I could’ve slept in until noon- which was tempting- but I usually have good experiences up at the hospital, and it’s something that I enjoy doing. After arriving, Dr. Nguyen informed me that the urinary tract infection he had scheduled for the morning (and had told me about in the days prior) had been moved due to some patient complications. Bummer. Instead, the morning schedule consisted of the usual: a lecture, valve conference, and patient checkups. The lecture involved a young patient with internal bleeding of the left colon along with a nasty case of necrosis, which is a fancy word for cell death. The necrosis was caused by ischemia, an inadequate supply of blood. Multiple surgeries were performed on him, and he spent two weeks on a ventilator. After all of this, the doctors just couldn’t walk away, and proceeded on with treatment- as of now he is back in school, with his only issue being a slightly-elevated diaphragm. An operation to solve this is soon to follow. Valve conference was very short, and only a few cases were presented. One case that caught my eye was that of a middle-aged patient with no past medical history, who suddenly had a stroke. It was later discovered that he/she had a mass in the right atrium of his/her heart, and that it could be some rare form of sarcoma. Only time will tell. From here, we went to post-op patient checkups. I saw one of the patients we checked with get operated on a few weeks earlier, and even got to meet with him before that surgery. I’ve seen him work through his entire process at the hospital; pre-op, surgery, and post-op/recovery checkup. I thought that this was pretty neat, but for the doctors around me, this was just another day at the hospital.
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