Alex Hauschild - Week 3 - Shields Oncology Rotation at Wills Eye

Last week was quite eventful for me. Monday we started out in Tumor Board at 6:45 as we do every Monday, and went over some curious cases that have been seen over the years so as to teach the fellow doctors, fellows, and med students about some uncommon form of ocular cancer. We then proceeded on to clinic where we saw many different types of cancers including but not limited to retinoblastoma, various melanomas, primary acquired melanosis (PAM), hemangioblastoma, and conjunctival squamous cell carcinoma to name a few. After a few hours with the doctors, we rotated out and went back to pulling charts and entering data for the research. After work, there was a party at my apartment hosted by the residents for the retiring doctors. All of the residents from the hospital came out and we had leftovers in the fridge until, well frankly, come to think of it, we still have leftovers. That was fun though, getting to meet the residents and hearing what they had to say about advice and the like there were around 40 people in total.

                Tuesday was fairly uneventful, filled with established patients mostly who just come for a follow up exam and usually end up being just fine. I was with Doctor Jerry that day and he took some time to show us some interesting stuff of note through the slit lamp.

                Wednesday was an EUA (evaluation under anesthesia) day and we got to see something fairly rare even for the Shields to see (meaning very, very rare). It was a morning glory disc to explain, a morning glory disc is a “congenital anomaly of the optic disk in which there is a funnel shaped excavation of the posterior fundus incorporating the optic nerve”. After work there was the senior resident skit which to my surprise was kind of like a Blair Day video except in that it wasn’t a pump up video but more of a good bye video. Very funny though, it made fun of most every department. The basic plot was the hospital’s quest for #1 eye hospital in the world (because right now they are second only to Bascom Palmer Eye Institute at the University of Miami). I will post the video if and when they decide to upload it to youtube. There was a massive keg of beer, boxed wine, and LOTS of really good pizza (either that or I was really hungry because I didn’t have lunch. *note: I am only saying what was there, I am in no way implying any illegal actions were taken). My mom also came down for clinic that day and we went out for dinner with some Philly friends afterwards. We had a very nice argument with the waiters about the definition of gratuity there, it was really quite humorous.

                Thursday was surgery day as always. We got to see a massive orbital tumor surgery. It took two hours to take out the mass, but given that they used no scissors or blades, only q-tips, it was quite impressive. The tumor when they took it out was the size of the patient’s whole eye. Dr. Carol gave us a chance to use the indirect which was quite interesting. I learned that it is very hard to maneuver the window of sight into the eye because of how the optics of the piece work. Other people in my group continued their study on the feasibility of iPhone photography instead of having an expensive retcam (which costs well over $100,000). We also finished putting in the data for the project with only 32 names missing out of 1,200. We took an “extended lunch” to go to one of the med student’s apartment watch the USA vs. Germany game.

Friday was just making follow-up calls to patients who haven’t come in the past 3 years or more.
This coming week we have 3 more med students joining (on top of the 16 already here) and another 4 or 5 fellows joining for the year. In total we will have about 50-60 people working in the clinic next week.