The picture I couldn't take

I really really wanted to take a picture during clinical. It was too beautiful, but with ethical considerations, HIPAA, and lots of staff in the room: inconceivable. Hey! I can draw it!

Paracentesis

The docs were performing paracentesis on a patient with end-stage liver disease. These patients get crazy ascites - accumulation of fluid in their bellies. So we "tap" them to drain out the fluid. I assisted by putting the other end of the tubing into vacuum jars, filling up five 1 liter glass jars with amber fluid. It foams up and looks like beer. (We could have easily pulled off three liters more.) They put them on the ledge of a giant window with a gorgeous cityscape. (I tweaked the skyline a little to mask where I'm doing my rotation, but it was as stunning as the picture suggests). Sigh. It's too bad I can't share a photo. So colorful and bizarre.