"Wait, wait, wait...okay...yeah...wait what am I listening to?"
So this morning I got to slap some goo on a patient so that I could look at her thyroid. I held the probe for about 4 seconds, enough to see the well circumscribed nodule on the left wing, just next to the isthmus. I can't lie. It was pretty fascinating to look at.
It was, however, interesting at someone's expense. Shortly thereafter, the tech held the same probe in place to guide the endocrinologist's biopsy. He took a honker of a needle and repeatedly lanced the poor lady's gland about a million times, sucking out the bloody pulp left behind. The tissue was hardly recognizable. In stunned horror I watched as he came maybe a millimeter from the carotid artery in the neck. That's the artery that shoots like ten feet in the air in your standard horror movies. It's actually not the "jugular" like most people say. That's a vein and it's more likely to ooze blood than to shoot it. This is not to say it doesn't ooze a lot.
Medicine is pretty cool, even if my toes are just five weeks wet.
