My Gynecology Posting!

So I spent last week in the OG I department at the hospital. It was an amazing week, and there was so much girl power going on within the department! The Spice Girls would've loved it :-)

On Monday, I spent the day in OPD, which is the outpatient sector of the department. Since I don't understand Tamil or Hindi at all, I sort of had to read the chart notes that the resident and intern were taking to understand at all what was going on with each patient. I did pick up on some body language and nonverbals though, so I wasn't totally lost! The intern I spent the afternoon with, Ludia, was a such a gem. She explained everything to me and was really patient when I asked 50,000 questions. It was interesting that the men came into the room with their wives for their gynecological appointments, and in some cases, they did all of the explaining.

On Tuesday, I spent the day in the "operating theater". I watched the all female crew of attendings, residents, and interns perform multiple hysterectomies and ovarian cyst/tumor removal procedures. One patient had a HUGE ovarian tumor. She was a tiny, probably 90lb woman, but with the tumor, her stomach was protruding as if she was pregnant. She lost 4 liters of fluid between ascites and blood. I also saw a C section that afternoon, so I saw my first baby being born!

On Wednesday, I spent the day in rounds with the OG I crew. The attending was brutal, and the interns were studying hard for the hour before they began because they knew she would ask tons of tough questions. We also had a case discussion with the attending about a patient who had had a previous bilateral mastectomy, and she now had ovarian tumors. Since we just finished our Genetics class at school, I figured that she might have the gene for these cancers, BRCA 1 or 2, and it turns out I was right. So I was super excited about that. In India though, they can't do genetic testing for the gene because there are only two labs that will perform the test. The rest of the day we ran an outpatient menopause clinic.

On Thursday, we had the outpatient clinic again. On Friday, we had surgery again. I saw my first laparoscopic surgery. It was a sterilzation procedure where they clamp the fallopian tubes. SUPER COOL. The woman was only 20 years old! The attending Dr. Alice explained to me that the young age is really common in India. The next surgery was a total abdominal hysterectomy, since the woman had a very large uterine fibroid. I also saw another ovarian tumor removal procedure that was done on a woman with metastatic cancer. The procedure was done to make her remaining time as painless as possible.

I was really inspired by all of these intelligent and motivated females. I ended up really enoying gynecology, even though originally I was hoping to be on labor and delivery. I think when I'm back in the States, I'm gonna try to do some shadowing in gynecology/gynecological surgery!