Fatback

I was unaware until yesterday that people actually ate fatback by itself- I thought you just cooked with it. Beware, it's apparently a favorite snack of truck drivers...
Gaston Memorial Hospital has been great in the past week, I'm finally getting to the point where I can do things on my own, just in time to switch to another unit and preceptor on Monday. But, I have been learning a lot about neuro, rehab, and psych AND I got to see these incredible pictures of a man with a megacolon pre/post surgery (and the colon itself, after removal). This guy didn't have a BM for 3 weeks (!!!!!) but kept eating and the colon had stretched so much it was almost 5 feet long and over 4" in diameter in some sections. They took out his colon but left a long rectal stump so he probably won't have to have his ileostomy for more than a year! Moral of the story is: if you/your patients don't poop for a while, you should probably get that checked out by a doctor stat. (Actually, it apparently is more common in the elderly or those with chronic constipation. This guy was only 47, though.)
And in other news, from the so-sad-it's-kind-of-funny section, I visited a husband and wife pair today in ortho. The wife was in for a knee replacement and while the husband was visiting her, he tripped over a telephone wire in her room, fell, broke his hip, and had to get hip replacement surgery.
Hope everyone's having a great week!