Gyn/Onc

One week into Gyn/Onc and I have very mixed feelings. Well, maybe not so mixed. I mean, on the one hand, some of the surgeries are relatively interesting (at least, what I can see of them from my appointed student spot of "the end of the table" with my retractor firmly in hand). On the other hand, the surgeries are often long and tedious and repetitive--mostly just hysterectomy after hysterectomy--and I have to stand for really long periods, which is painful for me with my back issues, and did I mention that the days are reeeeeeeally long?

I think what I've learned from this week is that I like doing. Which is kind of odd, because most people who are "doers" by nature LOVE surgery--it's the ultimate hands-on fixing of people. But for me, I get impatient. For example: in a surgery I watched the other day, we removed a mass the size of a watermelon from a woman's abdomen. It was crazy (and crazy long, at almost 6 hours between getting into the room and getting out), and something a lot of students would kill to see. But for me, while the getting out of the tumor was interesting, after that all of the nit-picky detail of digging about looking for lymph nodes was just flat out boring. Maybe it's just because as a student, I'm not the one with the scalpel, but I'm not sure I would find it that much better even then. I really prefer things like the morning I spent in clinic, where I got to see several patients and actually talk to them. A lot of people I know hate clinic because they find it tedious (and it's true that you do see a lot of the same problems over and over), but I think the time flies by much faster there than surgery because I am actively involved with a person the entire time.

Maybe this is just how I confirm that general specialties are the way to go for me--but I have to admit, I'll be rather glad when gyn/onc is over at the end of next week and I can head into an outpatient setting for two whole weeks, to see what this specialty is really like in the real world.