Weekly Report (2/28-3/12)

The last few weeks have been packed with exciting experiences- on the Thursday before spring break I was given the opportunity to go into the operating room for the first time. Heading into the Parkland operating rooms, I was incredibly excited but I was also very anxious. Although I had performed various dissections throughout my education and was given the opportunity to see cadaver organs at a UTSW field trip through HOSA, I knew that an actual operating room with live patients was going to be new and very different than anything I had experienced before. This being said, I thought it was important to validate the thought that I wanted to be a surgeon, as well as experience the other half of the field of surgical oncology. I was able to observe three different surgeries- the resection of a lipoma, the resection of rectal cancer, and a distal pancreatectomy for a pancreatic mass that was approximately 14 centimeters in diameter. All of these procedures were incredibly fascinating to watch, and this experience definitely reinforced the idea that I want to enter into the field of surgery as a doctor. After being in the operating room, I find it difficult to imagine a future without surgery.