What a way to start the day! I got a phone call this morning to let me know that one of my clinic patients got admitted to the hospital last night. It is now 5:30 am, so I start to get ready. Normally, clinic patients need to be seen before 7:30 am, but I am on Orthopedics right now, and the orthopedist I am working with has clinic at 7:00 am. I need to get moving. After getting ready and getting the dogs fed, I head off to the hospital.

I find my patient and try to figure out what is going on. My patient was admitted for a chest pain rule out, so this should be a pretty routine admission. Luckily, troponins are normal, so pending some further tests today the patient should be able to go home this afternoon. Then I head out to Ortho clinic.

Clinic with the orthopedist I am working with is always crazy. We normally see about 70 patients a day, so it is very fast paced. However as someone interested in Sports Medicine, I love it. Today is Friday, so there are a lot of post-op visits. There are some new patients to evaluate. As always, there are a couple of patients to perfect my joint injection skills on. I have injected a lot of shoulders and knees this month, so this is nothing new.

We finish with clinic around 11:30. That means a have just a little bit of time before surgery starts. I run and get something to eat. I quickly check my clinic messages, refill some prescriptions before the weekend, and check on my patient in the hospital. All of the tests are negative, so I discharge the patient home. I run back to our outpatient surgery center. We have few shoulder scopes, a couple of rotator cuff repairs, a decompression, and one SLAP lesion. After that is a medial meniscus tear. We finish around 3:00 pm. This is good timing because the orthopedist I am working with is on Trauma call this weekend, and there are already two patients waiting for us at the hospital.

We head over to the hospital. One patient is an elderly lady that was in a MVA and has an open tibia fracture. We take her to the OR to clean out the wound and close it. It is not displaced, so we place a splint. The next case is a 15 y/o football player with a displaced distal radius fracture. We put the patient to sleep, reduce, and splint. While that patient was getting ready for the OR, we go evaluate another MVA patient. This patient has completely ruptured his MCL. Things quiet down with consults after that.

Oh, did I mention it is Friday night. It is time for high school football. As a resident interested in sports medicine, you can cover high school sports. I cover John Glenn High School, which is a 3A high school just south of town. They are playing away tonight, so I have to hustle to make it to the game. The game goes off without incident. John Glenn wins with a resounding victory and more importantly no major injuries.

I finally get home around 11:00. It has been a really long and fast paced day. What a great day!

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