APain

Acute Pain month - "Pain in the butt"
Anyways, it was a fun month. Did lots of regional blocks for surgery and had my first experience ever being on call. It was impressive that they would let me, an intern with practically no experience, to do quite a number of blocks. For the first week, I was pretty much the assistant, setting up, prepping, clean up and doing records. By second week, I was doing some of the easy blocks myself with assistance. It was exhilarating. I have done with and without ultrasound. It's finally something anesthesia related, not just medicine anymore.

Had my first ever call. nerve wrecking but good. The rest of my calls were good. Apparently, I'm one of the residents who has the "white cloud" for calls, meaning that the calls were light, no craziness and able to get good amount of time for sleep. I think I got at least 4 hrs of sleep for every call.

During the month, I was able to see and do some less common blocks. One of them was the axillary nerve block and supraclavicular blocks. Those are usually done by fellows but they were busy or it was beginning of my call, so I ended up doing it. Way cool.

Epidurals are still difficult. I have done a few but it's still difficult being that there are no imaging to see where I'm going with the needle, unlike other regional blocks. It's definitely a good one to learn, but I need more practice.

I can honestly say, I can't wait till I do my anesthesia rotations. :)