My youngest son loves to ask me about surgery. It totally grosses him out. He can’t stand to hear me tell tales of writhing bowels and beating hearts – stories of open abdomens and open skulls. It makes him gag, but he keeps right on asking.
Today is Halloween. A day ripe for telling stories of blood and guts and grossness.
The good news is that you build up a sort of tolerance to these things over time. When I started in foot and ankle, we would see these diabetic ulcer patients. Their extremities where complexity insensate. It took me a long time to appreciate it. They would walk in on a foot that had a GIANT oozing hole in the bottom of it. I would take a very sharp knife and cut away the dead tissue from the wound in the hopes that one day, it may heal.
Taking a scalpel to a person’s foot while the chatted about the weather, took a little getting used to. I talk about wrapping your head around a topic, not just reading it, but feeling it. No matter how many times I’d read about diabetic neuropathy, I was completely unprepared for it out in the world. I cringed every time I picked up the knife, but eventually, over many office visits, I settled into the idea that they were totally numb.Numb like a block of wood. It became obvious once you really got it how these wounds could form and why they would most likely never heal.
Alright alright, enough talk of oozing infected wounds, Halloween or no Halloween. Let’s move to something even scarier, something even more horrific. Today is your last opportunity to join Physician Assistant Exam Scholars before the November issue goes to the printer and before the price goes up.
If you are already a member or if you join before the Vampires return to their coffins then you’ll lock in the current rate for as long as your a member. Tomorrow the monthly price goes up for good, and if you join in the future, it will be at the new higher price.
Terrifying, I know. Run quickly and join before the moon sets.
Physician Assistant Exam Scholars
Brian Wallace