Indexing Title: BCDEVEZA’s Medical Anecdotal Report [ 06 – 3 ]
MAR Title: It’s Never Enough
Date of Medical Observation: April 16, 2006
Narration
My residency training opened my mind to a lot of things.Foremost are the surgical cases I see, day in and day out. I said to myself, I must have seen enough – enough cases that will help me to develop my skills. But I was wrong. I haven’t seen enough.
Our hospital has to undergo temporary closure and we were deployed to another hospital, also in the City of Manila. It was my first duty in that hospital and it was around 9 p.m. when my intern approached me and told me that the nurse on duty had a referral. “Doktor, may gustong ipakita sa atin yung nurse. Kakaibang kaso daw.” Those were the exact words of my intern. Naturally, I wondered what it was. And so, we went to the emergency room and checked on the patient. He was a 47-year-old male whose skin on the ventral aspect of the shaft of the penis got caught in a zipper. I asked him how it got there but he was too timid to tell about it. I did my physical examination to check if there was any other problem. After some time, I referred this to the consultant on duty. He admitted that it’s his first time to encounter such. He also did his physical examination. He paused for a while, thinking of how we can remove that zipper. After a few minutes, he asked the nurse to prepare the materials. I prepared the site and placed some anesthesia. At first, we tried to simply pull it but the skin was very much adherent to the zipper. The consultant then decided to cut a portion of the skin so that the zipper will come along. And that was exactly what we did. We removed it successfully. Before the patient left, I tried to ask him again how it got there. All I got was a big smile and a scratch on the head.
Insights (Physical, Psychosocial, Ethical) (Discovery, Stimulus, Reinforcements):
Life is full of surprises. As well as residency.
I may have seen many cases in my almost two years in the training. Cases which help me to become a good surgeon. Some are ordinary while others are rare. But no matter how you look at them, it will mold you in becoming the best you can be.
I thought I have seen enough until I saw that patient. It was a learning experience for me. I realized that in our profession, there is always something new and interesting to learn about. I would say that this is one of them.
We must constantly have that zest for knowledge because in medicine….. IT’S NEVER ENOUGH. All that we do is a continous learning process.