Fifth Day

Yesterday, I worked with Peggy and Linda again. We scheduled patients and made sure everything in general surgery was in working order. Then, I went to a meeting with them to discuss scheduling sentinel node biopsies. The nuclear technician was there and told us all about doing them. You need a probe as long as a big suitcase for the biopsy and there are so many other aspects involved like keeping the tissue in a lead box so no radioactivity leaks out. Also, before any surgery the patient has to be injected multiple times with the dye. These sentinel node biopsies can be done for breast cancer and melanoma and it is very effective because this way the doctor's don't have to take out all the lymph nodes just the sentinel node. The morbidity rate for patient's has gone down because of this surgery. So, after that meeting I just stayed with Peggy until the end of the day.