Today, our class started off with a Skype call to Dr. Kwong, an aspiring oncologist and current trauma surgeon. Dr. Kwong shared her plentiful knowledge of surgical oncology, how to become a doctor, and trauma surgery. One particularly interesting thing she discussed were the different cases that came into the trauma rooms from day-to-day. Because there is no set time or pattern for traumas to occur, she could be called in and only have one patient , yet she could be called in the next day and have seven to ten patients. When asked what her most interesting trauma was, Dr. Kwong said that once, she had two patients that were shot 6 times. Although one died, the other came out with just a broken toe. The wide array of patients and cases was very interesting to hear about, and exciting to learn about.
After our break, the class practiced sutures on bananas. We watched a video first to learn how to use the tools we had and how to hold the skin together. We opened our bananas, removed the actual fruit part, and started trying our individual stitches. The whole class got better with every stitch we tried, and by the end, we had closed all the bananas all up. After lunch, we retrieved our petri dishes from the incubator and inspected the colonies of bacteria that had grown. Our group was very successful and had plentiful amounts of colonies that formed and that glowed in the dark.