It's Friday Night!

The 3rd last Friday before it All Comes to an End. I think, the problem with leaving peripheral courses for the last... is incredible inertia. It doesn't help that ORL has surgeries with the smallest operating field (like looking through nostrils, much?), and today is just a way packed day at the surgery. We had a case of vocal cord polyp in a tour guide, another one of chronic tonsillitis in a poor kid who somehow managed to survive an entire year on steroids for his persistent inflammation (way to go ORL clinics!!). Then there was a relatively uncomplicated chronic rhinosinusitis involving only the right maxillary sinus and OMC. My consultant, Z, was such a sweetheart and let me play with the endoscope (helloooo eustachian tube and rosenmuller fossa!). I must say Z is the best ORL surgeon i've seen.. not that i've seen many. But i can personally attest to his incredible skill because the horrendous nasal obstruction that troubled me for the longest time was totally cured under his magic fingers (whoohoo!). Bilateral patent nostrils!! And despite being done under local anesthesia, it didn't hurt ONE BIT. So, after the jiffy Functional Endoscopic Sinus Surgery (FESS), there was a poor old lady with double primary cancer. She had absolutely no risk factors... but had oral cancer nonetheless. Brave as she was, she managed to complete her entire radiotherapy sessions despite the formation of a few really nasty submental fistulas and abscesses. And because of this persistent infection, she developed bilateral ear effusions which affected her hearing. So this time, she was here for bilateral grommet insertion and drainage of her abscess. THEN (tired yet?), we had one lady with parotid gland tumor which ... perhaps was malignant. We don't know, so we're waiting for the pathology. But the risk of removing such a tumor was facial palsy, cuz the facial nerve courses through the parotid... which could result in disastrous lawsuits despite all that preoperative preparation. Finally, there's the guy with thyroglossal duct cyst.. which required a Sistrunk procedure. Cool stuff! It's a congenital deformity of the tract that the thyroid gland leaves behind when it descends from the tongue base to its eventual location.... zzz soooo many cases in a day! So.. by the time I went off, I was out like a light. Talk about case overload!! But perhaps i'm getting soft...