Medical Elective- Day 33

Today was pretty cool. Ward Round at 8 (after actually remembering to fetch my laundry from the laundry dungeon), went to theatre around 9, found New Friend and then spent the day watching what can only be described as a Seriously Cool surgery. There were two Maxfacs consultants and a Neurosurgery consultant. The patient was having an SCC removed from their temple that had invaded to bone. So the skin, muscle and everything else was removed, then the neurosurgeon set about removing a section of the skull and then an area of the dura, down to brain. Today I watched a living human brain. It’s beautiful, like in pictures. In real life brain pulsates. It has two rhythms, one with the cardiac pulse and the other with the respiratory cycle, so it looks rather erratic, as if it had a mind of its own (oh yeah, get in there brain jokes). Pulsating brain is both weird and beautiful and gave me a whole brand new sense of wonder about the profession I’ve chosen. After the dissection, they covered the brain with fakey-dura (that looks like a little brain quilt) and brain glue (which is the same colour as blue washing up liquid) and a big bit of stainless steel mesh. The defect was then covered with a rec fem pedicle from anterior thigh. And we were all done and dusted by 5.30. Early finish!

That was pretty much it today. Although I feel that’s enough to warrant bloggage; chillaxed day with a bit of sketching, bit of photography, bit of banter and brain. Have been back at The Accommodation trying to work up the energy to paint and pack to head back to Notts in the morning. So far I’ve just mostly eaten chocolate.

This evening’s portrait sums up a lot of this elective period- a biro drawing. I got changed out of my scrubs this afternoon and emptied out a pocketful of tabs from doing up peoples scrub gowns. I had apparently been taking the tab and each time just shoving it in my pocket. Bar the one I used to write a note on I came home with six. So I taped them together and did tonight’s drawing on them. Here’s to the end of five weeks of not scrubbing in, in favour of biro sketches.