My second day at the Cary Pediatric Office started just as quick as the first day. As soon as I walked in, I was being pulled to go and meet with a patient for their 3 year old check up. The first few appointments in the day were about check up’s and vaccinations. I was able to watch the process of vaccinations within their office. This included the prepping of the vaccination, and (sadly) the injection. After the standard appointments, I was pulled into another appointment by another doctor. His name is Dr. Villareal. He had a patient that had come in with symptoms of strong stomach ache, fever, and was really slow to move because of the stomach pain. I learnt that stomach pain all depends on where it is in the belly. Dr. Villareal knew almost immediately by the symptoms and feeling the stomach that the child had appendicitis. The pain was localized to one area and the child refused to move around a lot because of the pain involved with the infection. One aspect that made the appointment even more interesting was that the childs mother only spoke Spanish. Therefore, Dr. Villareal had to explain appendicitis in Spanish, and it was very interesting to watch him interact with her through speaking the language. He also showed me the blood test results that he completed that showed all the signs of the appendicitis such as an elevated white blood cell count. I also got to witness several other tests and their results with Dr. Seidel. I saw another test that was for an asthmatic child and it was to see how well their medicine was working. The test was all about how hard/fast/long the child could breathe for and the purpose is to test the expanding and contracting of the lungs. The results were in a graph form to show the intensity between the several times that the child had to blow into the test. After this, Dr. Seidel and I went to her office to call a patient, but they didn’t pick up. So it turned into a discussion between Dr. Seidel and I about my interests for the future, what she has learnt from her job, and the advice she had for me. Overall today was another great day and I learnt so many things!
