It's great to hear how excited everyone is about their first week of extern. We are really out there spreading our wings. :) I'm hoping that as you read this that you too have ice on your arm & hand as I do. Super sore from scanning sooo much, but I'm loving the pain.
Needless to say I've been staying super busy at UCDMC. I've been doing only in-patients. Basically I complete the Parasternal long and short portions of the exam and then the tech I'm with for the day does the rest. I've been getting used to my new Phillips, its really user friendly and has some amazing functions. We just got a new GE Vivid VE and I can't wait to use it next week :). We don't do any history or phy eval on our patients so two of my columns are completely blank but it sure does make my job easier, lol. But I do have 30 completed exams and I've scanned on all of them.
I hardly ever see a normal echo. Every patient has some kind of pathology. Today I got to scan an aortic aneurysm that measured 4.9... WOW. It was the coolest thing I've ever seen, but I felt bad for the patient because he couldn't even speak English (That happens a lot at UCDMC). We see tons of AS and MR. Effusions are super common also. I've already been fighting the bulge with some patients. Many 400 and 500lbs patients :(, after Ive been pushing with all my force I feel as though my hand might fall off. We usually end up using definity on those patients. And the cool thing is we get to make the call if we want to use contrast and we inject it too. I have yet to get my hand stuck under a pancake boob but I feel that its coming in the near future.
I absolutely love everyone in my department. We have many different personalities and different styles of scanning. Some of the ladies have 30 years of experience and some are new graduates. I'm really hoping I will get hired on because they feel like family already. The cardiologists are amazing and very welcoming. Today I got invited to a lunch conference with them (I am very honored). I'm starting to teach one of the fellows how to scan... who would think that I would teach something to a doctor, weird, but super cool.
Well, I better get to bed and get some quality rest, I've been getting up at the crack of dawn all week and I cant wait to sleep-in tomorrow morning. :D
-Ash G
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