Something happened during the pandemic.
People got bored.
A lot.
Even healthcare professionals.
And they turned to YouTube and Instagram and TikTok to make reels as a way to release the pandemic pressure and to make us smile.
Dr. Erin Nance was one of these.
She is a double board certified orthopedic hand surgeon. This is her story.
She is also big into treating the undiagnosed and unheralded medical problems of women. Because, you see, she was also dismissed because of her gender in her internship selection. And she knows that many women are dismissed because of their gender when they seek medical care.
I like and admire that.
We all know that surgery is my favorite. But my especial favorite is hand surgery. I have stared down other orthopedic surgeons who wanted to bump a finger amputation because to them it is just a hand. Yeah, that is like calling brain surgery easy.
Shortly after starting at the regional orthopedic hospitals after we moved across the country I was offered and subsequently took on the hand service line. This means that I was responsible to knowing everything about the hand surgeons and the hand surgeries. I also ordered specialized sutures for the hand surgeons. Healthcare being healthcare I was also handed the trauma service line and the pediatric service line. This means that I had to know all of the fixation types to fix a broken bone or to fix a tendon.
It was a lot.
Hands hold and sculpt and cook and soothe and comfort. Hell, the opposable thumb is what allows for much of what the hand is capable. Opposable thumb means that you are able to bend, twist and touch the tip of your thumb to all of your other fingers. This allows us to hold a pen, or a paintbrush and create art or books. When they talk of fine motor skills, this is what they mean.
Put your hand out and take a look at it. Spread your fingers wide and note which muscles of your forearm control which finger. There are 23 bones in your hand. The bones of your fingers, we call these phalanges, each have a tendon attached to them that enables their movement.
I waited and waited and waited to get this book from the library. I have seen a few of her videos on Facebook and I found her to be warm and genuine and have really great stories. I was very excited to read her book.
I received and read her book in one sitting. Not hard because it is less than 250 pages.
As much as I was looking forward to this book, I didn’t like it as much as I was expecting.
There isn’t much of a narrative throughline. There is her brother Kevin who suffered a devastating spinal injury with spinal cord fracture on her very first day of her internship. The scenes written with him were warm and just on the side of Pollyanna puke that I live on. He pops up periodically as Dr. Nance celebrates his wins.
The stories are not told in a chronological order. This kind of bugged me and some of the stories I am familiar with through her stories were missing. Ones that I think would’ve made compelling reading.
Her very short chapter on the other denizens of the operating room left much to be desired. According to her explanation I, as an OR nurse, comfort patients and fetch them warm blankets and are a soothing presence as anesthesia is started. And my mood sets the mood for the entire room.
Yes, but.
She could have definitely gone deeper here.
The book was less surgery details focused and more her process focus through internship, residency and hanging out her shingle immediately after residency. This means that she opened her own practice because she couldn’t find a niche.
I can respect that.
But I didn’t like this book as much as I expected because it was so shallow. There isn’t a lot of detail that screams real life. This is a good book for those who are not in the know. There isn’t a lot of gore or death or broken bones.
I picked up the book expecting some of that and it did not deliver. That is what I meant by shallow. There are depths that I wish had been plumbed.
Dispatches from the Evening Shift 