II.II.IX JOURNAL ENTRIES Journal entries from my rotation in neurosurgery: I’ve been woken up at 3AM to see someone with a foreign body in their ear. This guy had managed to get a cotton bud stuck in there. At 3AM. Who the hell decides to clean their ears at 3AM? I’ve been practising my suturing technique since I was a […]
Privilege
II.II.VIII PRIVILEGE Halfway through my rotation, I started to realise what neurosurgery really entails. All the bureaucratic and administrative nonsense we dealt with on a daily basis was just clouding the bigger picture. The work that truly matters is the work happening down in the operating room. Neurosurgery is a specialty of extremes. When it goes well, the outcomes can […]
Drowning
II.II.II DROWNING The word busy doesn’t even begin to describe the sheer amount of work one is met with in the neurosurgical department. I’d go in every single day far earlier than I was expected to in order to do the pre-round, something I’d usually do out of my own volition to speed up the ward round. During this rotation, […]
Neurosurgery – First Day
II.II.I FIRST DAY As much as I dreaded leaving Gozo and going back to Malta’s chaos and commotion, I was still quite psyched about my upcoming rotation. Next up was neurosurgery – my all-time favourite specialty and the gateway to my lifelong career aspirations. Together with Jacqueline, another house officer in her first year, and Christa, our senior doubling as […]