I'm half way through the first orthopedic surgery rotation. I have finally figured out that I really like this specialty, which is a big relief considering I chose to do a specialty in it. Ortho surgery is tough stuff, meaning physically demanding. It's not so mentally exhausting because it's all geometry and physics. I have seen a variety of different ortho surgeries now but knee replacements are still one of my favorites. I think I like them because they are so physical and gory. For the most part they are pretty straight forward. It's next to impossible to mess up a knee replacement. They use pre cut metal pieces to cut the bone to the perfect shape. Essentially it's a stencil that's used to cut out puzzle pieces. Then you just glue all the pieces in to the permanent position. They use the same tools that a carpenter would use in his woodshop; power drills, mallets, chisels, power saws, nails, and screws. I can see why it's predominately a man field. It's pretty cool when you use a power saw to cut through bone and instead of sawdust and wood chips flying it's bone dust and bone chips. We have to wear these suits to prevent infection. They look a lot like nuclear suits that you would wear if you were going into a reactor. It's surprisingly a relatively non-bloody procedure especially considering you are essentially amputating a leg and putting it back together. They use a tourniquet so the blood flow is cut off to the limb. After all the parts are glued into place they let the tourniquet down and then it gets messy. But up until that point it's fairly blood free. The only complaints I have about knee replacement operations is that they take 2 hours for one knee and a lot of the time we do 2 knees during the same operation. 4 hours of holding legs gets really tiring. A typical OR day is between 12 ands 14 hours. My body feels like it has been through a massive workout at the end of the day. This exhaustion is strangely a rewarding feeling. If I decide to work in orthopedics when I'm all done I'm going to have to workout frequently just to be able to do my job. My next OR day will be spent doing back surgery. I have yet to see that so I'm pretty excited!

*Obviously the girl in the picture is not me but that is exactly what we wear for joint replacements.