This was another irregular day; I didn’t have school and Dr. Nguyen had a resident lecture to give early in the morning, so I ended up going at 8:00 instead of 6:50. So, I skipped valve conference and went straight into pre and post-op patient checkups. I usually don’t see a lot of these, but since I didn’t have to get back to school at a certain time, I was able to get involved in two of them:
The first was very, very standard (this is good); the patient was a woman in her mid-60s, who was recovering from an open-heart valve replacement (I can’t remember if it was aortic or mitral) a month or so ago. She was doing fine, but was concerned with the development of bacteria over her scar. To remedy this, she was given some betadine, an antiseptic used for surgery prep. Daily applications of that, along with some gauze, would be more than enough to deal with her issue.
The second was a pre-op patient, a man in his early 60s who worked at an auto shop. He had mitral calcification (his mitral valve was blocked and couldn’t pump as much blood as it normally could), type 1 diabetes, and some breathing issues. Throughout my time in the room with him, he brought up how his vision and memory hadn’t been very sharp in the past few weeks. This led us to believe that something was wrong with his carotid arteries (which lead to the brain). This could be a possible clot, which is an entirely different issue for another department. A recurring theme throughout the time I spent with him was the difficulty he had with the medical terms being thrown around. He was hesitant to attempt saying the names of the surgery options he was given, even refraining from saying cardiologist or MRI. This gives me extra incentive to pursue the stenosis project with Dr. Nguyen; it’s so integral that people know the scope of their condition and what exactly is wrong with them.
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