Wednesday, August 1, 2012

TEMPLE OF SURPRISES

Medicine really is an art. You don't know what will happen next; what you will find and we always expect the unexpected.
Yesterday, I operated on a patient who had a mass on the left arm as big as a ping-pong ball. I expected to find intraoperatively an ordinary LIPOMA - a bulk of fat. But lo and behold, it was a big whitish tumor attached to the nerve surrounding it actually ( ulnar nerve) and no matter how I infiltrate anesthesia on the surrounding areas, there was pain and I cannot proceed. It took me several minutes before I can free the tumor with a lot of pains to the patient ( usual for tissues around the nerve).  I could only think of FIBROSARCOMA which is malignant or a NEUROMA - a tumor coming from the nerve itself.
If a surgeon is not well experienced in finding cases like this, he would surely close the wound without removing the tumor - an open-close case which always happened to young surgeons.
To me, medicine is the most exciting profession excluding the military life of course.

1 comment:

  1. Buzzzz! Military life exciting? They mostly sit around and wait. You count your blessings your not in the AFP.

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