Da Vinci and the Countdown

Well, I spent my first time in the OR today - we watched a radical prostatectomy and not only that, I leave for Ghana in 19 days - WOW time flies.

This morning we had our Urology Clinical Correlation - due to uncertainty regarding traffic we arrived at the hospital significantly sooner than necessary. After changing into scrubs, booties, caps, and masks we could potentially have looked like we knew what we were doing if it weren't for the somewhat aimless wandering and the periodic looks of fear anointing our visages. However after waiting some time our preceptor arrived and then we walked with him to his office doing a little prostatectomy quiz. Calgary has a funky robotic platform called a Da Vinci for performing laparoscopic prostatectomies. It is actually pretty cool. It is a big machine with articulating arms that are hooked up to various instruments that have been inserted into the patient. Then the surgeon sits at a console and controls four different instruments using his hands and feet. It is sort of like a combination of playing the organ and crocheting - at least from what it looked like. We clustered around the various monitors which showed what the surgeon could see. We were seeing it in 2D on flat screens. However, one cool feature of this machine is that the surgeon sees everything in 3D which is a boon for precise manipulation. Everything was hugely magnified so it was amazing once we got oriented (we finally saw the pubic symphysis which allowed us to get our bearings a litte) and we could see the various organs, vessels, and nerves that had to be dissected through or around in order to remove the prostate. Things didn't go especially well this morning in terms of speed from what we were expecting but after 3.5 hours the prostate was gone, the bladder had be anastamosed to the urethra (and tested to make sure it held water) and we were on our way. It didn't make me want to be a urologist and do lap prostatectomies several days a week. It was cool to watch for a while and I recognized the skill involved but it didn't really pique my interest but it was pretty amazing to watch the surgeon manipulate the needle drivers and suture to sew up the bladder.

Today is the 7th of June. I leave for Ghana on June 26th which is 19 days by my calculation - this is not very long at all! Between now and then we write our Renal/Endocrine exam. According to rumours floating around the class this is one of the most difficult systems exams that we will have...so it seems like the wise thing to do would be to initiate serious study effective immediately. However, we'll see how it goes.

This week I also have pre-elective departure briefings. We are going to have several sessions about ethics and different issues that will face students going overseas for their elective. In the past month I have also been vaccinated against a whole range of diseases including Yellow Fever, meningitis, Typhoid, and so on. I have a ticket, and I'm waiting for my visa so things are certainly getting exciting for my next adventure.

Considering the predicted difficulty of the exam I ought to pay attention. The lectures we've had recently are mainly on endocrine topics and have been very interesting so paying attention isn't actually that difficult...so now its time to learn more about the action sites of Testosterone.