saw my first code today. was doing uro rounds today when the announcement came over the pa, "attention all medical staff, code blue in ward 4-." the screens were already pulled round the patient, and the nurses had started the preliminaries. everything was rather peaceful actually, even when this assorted group of doctors streamed in from the other wards. everyone was milling around, and the patient's doctors were letting their colleagues in about her. heard the words "gcs 4", "dnr not decided"," for conservative management" and "not viable". suddenly all these phrases that i've heard in hospital took on a new meaning. here was a patient in asystole, and the decision whether or not full resus measures would be taken depended on all those words. meanwhile the patient had been intubated, the cart full of medication brought out, and my tutor and MOs had turned the cpr and bagging over to another group of doctors. we carried on with our rounds as if nothing had happened. very very surreal.

yesterday my gs team performed some cheem operation (esophajectomy kiv gastrectomy + colonic conduit) that lots of people were talking about, so much so that the surgeons from the other teams were hanging around outside the OT hoping for a chance to catch a glimpse of the action. the patient was suffering from what we thought was an esophageal tumour, but which ended up to be a gastrointestinal stromal tumour (GIST). very rare because GIST make up less than 3% of all GI neoplasias, and only 5% of these are in the esophagus. whatever the case, he presented last week with hematemesis and had not experienced any other symptoms before this, no LOA or LOW, nothing at all. was there at the beginning when they had first opened him up; all the surgeons took turns putting their hands inside to feel for the mass, which was next to the aorta. i think the op turned out all right, and i hope he can get back on his feet asap.

learnt a trick of the trade from my gs tutor today. it's rather ridiculous, and i nearly burst out laughing this morning while he was doing it. haha.