Day in the Life: Pediatric Neurosurgery

It’s been a couple eons since I’ve written a “Day in the Life” post, and truth be told, I’m about…3 rotations behind? Oops. It’s mostly because I broke my hand right after my Neurosurgery rotation. It made life a tad difficult, but I learned to deal!

This is actually a continuation of my rotation in Neurosurgery, but in the form of my very last week there! I spent the first 3 weeks rotating with a different team each week on the adult side, and on the last week, I was sent over the peds side!

Day in the Life: Pediatric Neurosurgery

A Typical Day

This was kindasorta the chillest week in the history of neurosurgery. My first day in peds neurosurgery was also my resident’s first day, so he actually gave me the day off to do whatever I wanted while he filled out paperwork and learned the ropes. :O!

We’d round on patients in the morning around 6 a.m., and my resident would get us breakfast(!) from the cafeteria. If it was a nice day, we’d sit outside to get a tiny bit of vitamin D in, and get “superior drinks from the Zoom caffe.”

This ribbon was hanging out in a hallway on the way out–it’s made of a bunch of paper cranes! (Sorry for picture quality, haha.)

Depending on the day, we’d spend some time either at clinic across the street seeing consults, referrals, and follow-up visits, or in the OR for the scheduled surgeries that day. I didn’t see anything quite as crazy as the awake craniotomies from my days in Adult Neurosurgery, but it was still really cool to get to see (and sometimes assist) with cases! :]

There were a lot of rare cases I never thought I’d see–Dandy-Walker, Crouzon’s, Langerhan’s histiocytosis…we also had several patients who came in after head trauma from various types of accidents, so this is my public service announcement to please always wear a helmet when you’re biking.

Hello, glove tattoos.

Random Overheard Quotes

• “How tired I am dictates how much resistance I put up at night. If I just want to sleep, I agree to everything they say.”
• “Anyone seen (one of the residents) down here? I’m managing 10 patients here, including one whose name is, “Discarded Body,” or so he likes to tell me.”
• “I got a full hour of uninterrupted sleep last night!!” (chorus of applause)
• “I admire him. He has balls, man. At 1:30 p.m., he asked, ‘Can we round now?'”
• “You’re welcome to join us, but if I were you, I’d be on a beach somewhere in about 30 minutes.”
• “What’s day and night anymore? There are no windows.”
  “Don’t you wear a watch?”
  “I stopped wearing a watch in residency because time doesn’t matter anymore–it’s all about the patients.”
• “I have a hamburger in one hand that I was just about to take a bite of when you paged me. This better be good.”
  “Do you have C. diff in the other hand?”
• “Who shops here?”
  “Rich people. There are some riffraff stores here like The Gap, but they’re socioeconomically separated from the others.”
• “I know it’s the second half of the day when the bow is at the side of your head.”

My resident found out that I was leaving my house every morning at 4:45 a.m. to get there, so for my last couple days, he told me I didn’t have to show up til 7 a.m. (Such a kind and considerate soul! :O )

Despite the crazy hours on Neurosurgery, I had a lot of fun, and the residents were really awesome to work with! Stanford definitely does a lot of really good teaching, for which I was really grateful, and getting to be at home again + having a little time to spend with my friends and family was awesome. :]

P.S. I managed to survive this rotation without coffee! ;P

Meals

I usually brought my own lunches, but my resident would get me breakfast in the mornings! Fridays were when there were guest lecturers, so we’d get free Peet’s and also free lunch! Our speaker had to leave to catch a plane, but we got to go get lunch anyway…at Nordstrom. (I totally thought they were kidding, but apparently, there really is a cafe in there!)

We’d convene at the “building that’s shaped like a uterus” for the guest lectures.

Parking

I continued my 0.5-1 mile walk every morning and evening from the shopping center parking lot!

Housing

Hooray for still getting to live at home!

Spring flowers!

Check out my other Day In The Life posts!