Week 3

I went to watch Bori's mentor, Dr. Spector's office hour this week. Actually this is my first time to watch how doctors communicate with patients. Dr. Spector showed me photos of several cases of plastic surgery. For me, these cases are unbelievable. In one case, a patient's mouse and jaw are completely opened which is amazing. Then the patient's skin got from the belly is grafted into the jaw and esophagus part. I forgot the exact function of the graft but what I saw in the photos gave me the impression that plastic surgery is related to almost every part of the body and can do whatever you can imagine. Then Dr. Spector met with several patients most of which had breast surgery, either reduction or reconstruction. One patient had different repair on two breasts because the first time she used all her fat in the belly. Dr. Spector told me that it is better for a patient to have both breast repaired at one time in case of such situation. Another patient had problem with the skin graft. She had her neck skin grafted but the scar at the interface of normal and grafted skin was red and inflamed. It seemed that this symptom was normal to skin graft. So she was told to come back several weeks later to have a check again. There were several other cases who had surgeries before and wanted to have further consultation with the doctor. They were given some small treatments. Obviously, doctors in surgery department have much more communication with the patients compared to doctors in radiology. Well, in some sense, facing and talking with patients is not that boring as facing the body images. But here you need more patience and communication skills as well as facing complaints and pain from the patients. Anyway, the life style of the two departments are completely different.

I continued my surgery watch this weak. With the help of Charlie, Michael and I watched a kidney tumor reduction surgery. This patient had tumor mass in the kidney and also colon tumor. This whole procedure included two surgeries. In the first surgery, the patient lay on his side and the doctors cut the patients abdomen open from the side of the body. Some of the big tumor mass was taken out but some residual tumor was treated by burning. As I found, the burning process lasted a long time. That is because the doctors had to make sure all the tumor is removed. In half way, ice was filled in the open abdomen. This could make the kidney shrink and leave more space in the abdomen for operation. Suture was the last part. It was different from what I thought. Human body is truly a precise. Suture has to make sure every layer be connected firmly. There were at least three layers sutured. This process took a long time. After everything was done in the first surgery, the operating table was re-oriented and the patient was placed in a supine position. This time the doctors used endoscopy to position the colon tumor. It was not easy to insert the instrument into the colon. Even though the doctor can monitor the whole process through the screen, the tube got stuck sometimes and the doctor had to push the patient's belly to deform the intestine and let the tube negotiate the big turns. Maybe a tube with a rotating head would be better here which could be a really good biomedical project! I searched online and know that patients had to take laxative. So the colon was pretty clean, except for some small dejecta residual. There are washed off by the water tube inside the endoscopy. When the whole test process was finished, the doctor used another scalpel tube and inserted inside the endoscopy. They positioned the tumor and reached the scalpel there. The tumor was removed by cutting with nope like knot and burning. The whole surgery was successful. But I did spent some time to realize that a tube can reach that far, about over 1 meter, into a person's intestine!