Day In The Life Episode 2

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Okay Mrs G we're all set to go..., taking care of your paperwork here, getting everything going all right. I just want to check with you on a couple of things here. You have pain that's going into your shoulders, arms, and hands - one side worse than the other?

It's mostly in my shoulder going up my neck, into my ear. Okay all right i had a couple just a couple of times in my fingers right now.

Both in your fingers just a couple times but mostly

You know by the end of the day I'm extremely uncomfortable.

Okay. All right you know you're going to have an incision on the right side of your neck but we're going to clean out both sides. You're going to feel a little pressure in the back. That's totally normal. You'll have a little bit of a sore throat after this. Just take ice chips and yogurt and soft foods for a day or so and you'll be fine. All right good let me just check your paperwork here. We're doing C4-5 C5-6 and C6-7. We've got compression there of your spinal cord and your nerves and we're going to...., we have some angle and angling at C4-5 as well. So this is my booking sheet and make sure that everything is signed here. I lost my pen again we're gonna have to go get a pen real quick. Maggie could you get me a pen thank you.

Lindsay put a mark on your side - good. All right, do you have any questions before we go back?

"How long do I use that?

I'd like you to use it probably for a couple weeks after the surgery. You don't need to sleep in it, but definitely would be something we want you to use for a couple of weeks okay? All day?...all day...

Remember we want the bones to fuse together and the enemy of that fusion is movement. Now it's okay if you move a little bit. It's okay if you sleep without it, but we don't want a lot of movement okay?

"OK"

We want it to solidify. Let me just sign this piece of paper and we're gonna update your hp right here.
"I have one other question."

Sure

"So I do tend to get migraines. If I get a migraine while I'm in the hospital I'd be able to get my Imitrex?"

Absolutely... absolutely

All right good. Oh i need you to do one more signature here okay... right there I just need to need your John Hancock. Thank you.

(With Med Student)
So on this person, they have a mass in their neck which was picked up incidentally actually, but you can see it's right here, and there's some expansion of the muscle there and you can see it clearly. You know there's normal paraspinus musculature and there's this encapsulated area. Now this could be a lipoma it could be a muscle tumor like a myosin rhabdomyosarcoma... some type of a sarcoma but at any rate the interesting features of this is that it is eroding some of the bone, so make sure you get this on the NeuroRounds and then we want to show the CT scan too. You can't really see the the mass as well here. Now it's not invading the spinal canal but it is on the cat scan...

"Malignant... not malignant but if it was a tumor metastasizing what would you order?"

Well...  she still needs a bone skin. We have to assume that it could be something bad so we get a bone scan. Now so you can see here that there's some erosion of the spinous process..., so that means it's a little more aggressive but it also it looks sort of...  See how smooth this is?

"Yes"

So it tells me it's more likely been around a long time, but you know we'll have to see.

"So those spinous processes have eroded. They're not just being being covered up?"

Nope. You see this is a normal one and you can see it's sort of bitten away here and you can see it's bitten away.

"It ate it."

Yeah. So this definitely because of that we need to remove this and you know it would be good to have a general surgeon to just have a backup person on that.

(Operating Room)
Poor sound...

(Dr. McLaughlin voiceover)
This is what I do. I wanted to share it with you because it's really rewarding and sometimes as a patient you may not understand where i'm coming from but maybe with this video you might understand a little bit more, and as a student it's just another chance for you to get an experience of what it's like and to decide whether you want to go into it or whether you don't want to go into it.

NeuroRounds March 1 2022

What really happens in NeuroRounds. Check out this strong back and forth between Dr. McLaughlin and one of our med student attendees. This is the closest thing to Neurosurgical Grand Rounds you've ever been a part of.