Trying to stay awake with the people who put you to sleep

Today, I had my first rotation at the St. Maarten hospital. We can choose pretty much whatever we want, so I chose anesthesiology to be sure that I'd see the OR! I had one heck of a time trying to stay awake though! The rotation was actually a lot of fun and very educational, but I am just not used to waking up at 6:30 AM! I've been a little spoiled lately, never having class earlier than 9:30 this semester. I know I'm going to have to adjust to a much earlier schedule for clinicals in a couple months, but I'm just not on that schedule yet, at all!

The first part of the morning was spent learning how to do a spinal block and insert an epidural catheter. Unfortunately, they don't really let you do anything on the hospital rotations here, but it's still interesting to watch. Then, we had about a half hour of downtime before the surgery. So, the anesthesiologist sat down with me and went through a ton of different nerve blocks. He also took me into the OR before surgery to show me the intricacies of the anesthesiology cart. Much to my surprise, they actually have a brand new, very high-tech looking setup in there! The outside of the hospital certainly looks nothing like a US hospital (or at least not any I've been in), but the ORs are modern.

The surgery today in my OR was a hip replacement on a woman who had just fallen and broken the head of her femur. The orthopedic surgeon was a guy from Curacao and seemed very good (although I might not have known otherwise). Even though I was rotating with anesthesiology, I spent most of the time by him and he did a reasonable amount of teaching also. Once the patient was asleep, there really wasn't a whole heck of a lot for anesthesia to show me, until it was time to wake her back up. This rotation definitely helped confirm that I want to be a surgeon. Mostly because I look good in scrubs. In any case, we can now sign up for another rotation if we want and I"m pretty sure I'll be signing up for another day with a surgeon. I just wish surgery didn't start until the early afternoon!