This One is for You Mom Thumper and I went up to visit my mom today. She needed to get her truck Smog checked and wanted me to go with her. After the Smog check we all went to lunch. Later on the way home Thumper and I stopped at a motorcycle gear shop to look around. While at my mom's she mentioned that I had not updated my blog lately. This blog entry is for you mom.

J.S. Bach must Hate me! I have mentioned before that I am trying (with lots of emphasis on "trying") to learn to play the violin. Every Monday afternoon I head over to the music store and go into a small room with my instructor. She is a 50 something year old lady of Russian ancestry who must have the patience of Job. I have very limited prior experience with music having taken a semester of beginner piano years ago in junior college. This means I am not only learning how to play the violin but I am also getting a crash course in reading music. If anyone out there knows of a good computer program that teaches the basics of reading music please let me know. So far I guess I am not doing to bad with the violin. I hit lots of clinkers and swear under my breath a lot as I try to play. Last night I was attempting to play the song "Yellow Rose of Texas" and Thumper was actually able to recognize what I was playing. Last Monday my teacher turned to the last song in one of my books and said to work on this one next. The song is "Minuet in G" by J.S. Bach. It is by far the hardest thing I have tried to play and so far it is kicking my butt. Tonight I got through about half of it with lots of clinker notes and much swearing. Mr Bach must be rolling in his grave with his hands over his ears!

Feast or Famine I tell my students that the night shift is a "feast or famine" situation. Some nights I don't do any cases at all and other nights I am lucky if I get a chance to eat something. My student is here to learn how to do trauma. Last weekend his very first trauma was on Saturday night. As I described below it was a good case with a stab wound to the heart. After that we did nothing on Sunday night and for the first couple of nights of this weekend we did no trauma. We did an appendectomy on one young man and removed a young ladies gall bladder. Both easy, routine cases that my student handled with me just observing him. He did a great job on both. Last night we "feasted" on trauma. It started at about midnight with a 36 year old man with a single stab wound to the abdomen. My student put the patient to sleep and placed the breathing tube. The surgeons opened his abdomen and went to work. They found 4 holes in his small intestine which they were able to repair. The patient had some blood loss but it wasn't a massive amount. We gave him several units of blood to replace what he had lost. When the surgeons were finished we woke up the patient and removed the breathing tube. As we finished the case another patient was rushed to the operating room. He was 20 something years old and had multiple gunshot wounds to the abdomen. This patient already had a breathing tube in and was bleeding profusely. The surgeons quickly went to work and we started administering blood and other fluids. The patient had extensive bowel damage requiring the removal of several sections of bowel. We gave the patient 25 units of blood products as well as lots of other fluids. We left the breathing tube in at the end and took him to the ICU. It was a good night for my student.

Another Cherry Broken I had another Army nurse anesthetist student start working with me this weekend. He will be here for a month to learn how to do trauma cases. Thursdsay and Friday nights were mostly quiet with us finishing one case. Last night we did a case involving a 20 something year old man with multiple stab wounds to the abdomen and left chest. The surgeons opened his abdomen and split his sternum to get access to his heart. It turned out that he had a stab wound into the right ventricle of his heart. The surgeons were able to close the heart wound and then moved on to his left lung and intestines which were also damaged. My student and I gave the patient 20 units of blood products as well as other fluids. The case lasted about 4 hours. We left the breathing tube in at the end and took him to the ICU. It was a good first trauma for my student.