Oregeon Transplant in Ohio

Today was my first day of my ER rotation in Circleville Ohio. I was pretty nervous in some ways. I'm in a different state and all my friends family and loved ones are far away. But thankfully I've already made some great friends. As usual my romance with the 'snooze' button on my alarm clock left me pressed for time in the morning. But the Dr. I am working under knocked on my door 30 min before I was scheduled to leave and told me he had an emergency run to make to the airport and that we would start work in 2 hrs. I was very relieved by this news.

You might be asking yourself why my supervising Dr. was knocking on my door so early in the morning. I suppose I should explain a little about my setting here in Ohio. My school (Pacific University) sends two students together on our rotation in Ohio. My fellow student and roommate is Chelsea Marshall, thankfully she is LDS, and one of the most positive up beat people I know. She is our class Vice- President, and I am the Class Secretary so we are already well acquainted. I really lucked out in having her come with me on the is rotation. We are renting a cabin which belongs to our supervising physician. It happens to be on his land about 500 yards from the lodge where his family lives. AND he is LDS as well, what are the odds? They (the Dr's. Family) totally welcomed Chelsea and I with open arms. The cabin we are staying is in super small it's a one room building. We have the necessities a dinner table, chairs, couches, microwave so it's reasonably well stocked. We sleep in a loft at the top it's very cozy up there, we can't stand up, but at least we can sit upright in the middle, where the roof comes to a point. The family has a small 40 acre farm with cows, and chickens. And of course kitties and puppies, so I'm in heaven, it reminds me of home, just what I needed being out here on my won.

So back to my time in the ER. The ER is average size we have up to 20 beds in our ER, and we can overflow into other areas if required. It's a 2 story hospital with all the common tools available. There is an ER entrance for the patients who can walk into the hospital, but the area where the Ambulances drop off their patients is called the "SQUAD" entrance. For some reason here in Ohio they call their ambulance crews 'Squads', go figure. Next to a patients name on the report board it will say " John Smith brought in by the squad for chest pain."

I was given a quick orientation to the ER then I was the subject in a Photo shoot for hospital IDs.

Finally it was time to get to work. I was introduced to the staff, who were more respectful and kind than most I've worked with. I was given my first chart to see a patient. I walked into a room to find a sobbing woman who was 8 mo pregenant with twins. After a bit of a struggle I was able to get gather from the tears and the Ohio accent that she was having wrist pain. And wouldn't you know, we found she had carpel tunnel syndrome. As it happens that many women get this during pregnancy and it often diminishes once they deliver.

I was lucky to have a variety of patients a 7 yr old who fell on the play ground, an 85 yr old constipated women, a 35 year old man who 'accidentally' nearly amputate his fingers. I've been getting a lot of practice doing sutures, I even had to learn how to stitch through fingernails, something I'd never considered doing.

One of the most interesting cases was a 43 year old man who shot through his hand with a nail gun. He managed to put the nail in next to his thumb and hit poked through the back of his hand. He let me take pictures. I'll post them in an separate email, so if you have a week stomach just don't open those particular posts.

Ohio is prettier than I thought it would be. There are no mountains so it is difficult for me to tell directions, it is mostly made up with rolling hills. When we arrived there were still a lot of red and gold leaves on the trees. For the most part the area I'm at is farm country, but Circleville itself is has a Wal-mart, groceries stores, the hospital, and a few other stores. It's large enough to have the things we need, but not small enough that we don't get lost. We are about 30 min from Columbus which was a fairly large city, but not nearly as big as I feared it would be. There are also many Amish people in the area, one of the Dr's. Does house calls in for the Amish, and he's agreed to take us out to visit them the next time he makes a call.

Overall I'm really enjoying my time in the ER and in Ohio. I think ER might be my calling in medicine, but I still have a lot to learn and more things to experience. Although I like Ohio, I miss Oregon and Utah

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