Today I had an even newer experience as I wasn’t with Dr. Logel. I started my day off at the Raleigh Hand to Shoulder Clinic with Dr. Messer. He has been doing hand and upper extremity surgeries for years and was a great teacher today, explaining to me before and after each patient he saw. There happened to be a big theme today in the hand clinic and according to Dr. Messer, it was very uncommon to see so many Dupuytren’s disease cases in one day. Dupuytren’s disease is where the “cords” under the skin become thick and tight over time and cause the fingers to curl downward into the palm of the hand. It was cool how today played out because I started the day by seeing a few patients who had come in for other issues, but Dr. Messer had me feel their thickening cords that weren’t bothering them. I then saw a patient who recently had shots injected into her hand, a treatment for Dupuytren’s disease, and was back for a check up. Without even seeing her before pictures, it was crazy to see how straight her fingers were able to get. However, I was still very interested in seeing how bad Dupuytren’s disease could get, and lucky enough, an elderly man came in as he had a cyst on his nail bed, but happened to also have severe Dupuytren’s disease on his other hand. I was shocked to see how deformed the fingers really could get and their lack of mobility, yet the patient was used to it. I saw some other patients with broken bones or arthritis, but Dupuytren’s disease was definitely a common theme.
Around noon, I left the hand clinic and went to Cary Athletes Performance Center with Mr. Meszler. He works with Raleigh Ortho as their sports therapist and does a lot of their physical therapy work. I got to observe all of their therapists there and saw a variety of different cases. This was very interesting because I could watch the patient through the whole process of getting dry needling, to laser treatment, to their exercises. One of the main therapists that I stuck around was Damion who was from Ireland and he would also explain to me what the purpose of each machine was and would even let me test out some of the exercise machines and stretches. Although I didn’t see as many patients as this morning, I still learned a lot and it was a great experience!
