Hello reader, my name is Alexis Boots and I go to school in Olathe, Colorado.This summer holds many great opportunities for myself! I am interning on the island of Saint Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands. The internship that I am taking part in is with Dr. Moorman, a plastic surgeon. Although he and his family live here in Saint Croix, they also have a home in Telluride, Colo. I am not they only intern on the adventure but along with me is Kitty Holbrooke a student from Telluride. The journey out here was a new thing for me because I had never flown on an airplane before until the morning of July 12, 2017. The trip to Saint Croix was fantastic! When we arrived on Saint Croix the Moorman family had a fabulous dinner for us even though it was around one in the morning by the time we got to the house.
The next day we began our first day on the job. This Thursday morning Dr. Moorman brought us to the hospital to began a breast reduction in the OR, which stands for Operating Room. Since it was the first day we didn’t get to completely scrub in during the surgery but got to watch every action made. It was very intense but a once-in-a-lifetime experience. The breast reduction was originally supposed to only take four-and-a-half hours but ended up taking six-hours. This was due to the fact that the women’s breast had a lot more breast tissue rather than fat tissue and blood than expected. It was crazy to see the amount of rags used to wipe blood during the surgery. Kitty and I are not the only interns here with Dr. Moorman, there are four others. Although they are all college PA students, which are Physicians Assistants.
Friday morning we participated in multiple Botox clients located at Dr. Moorman’s clinic. Botox is a drug prepared from the bacteria toxin botulin, used medically to treat certain muscular conditions and cosmetically to remove wrinkles by temporarily paralyzing facial muscles. The Botox demonstrations that Dr. Moorman demonstrated for us were all placed in the face. Mainly lower forehead near the eyebrows and in between the eyebrows. Next we went back to the OR to undertake another breast reduction. Luckily this time we were able to scrub in one at a time. Dr. Moorman 
randomly picked me to go first. When scrubbing in you have to be completely sterile, meaning you wash your hands with iodine to kill all germs and then your placed in a full sterile scrub like gown with doubled layered gloves over your hands. While doing so you must not touch any objects that are not sterilized around you, it can be very difficult. While having this gown on you also have a face mask and a hat to cover your hair particles. Scrubbing completely in made the experience so much more exciting. I actually got to cut for Dr. Moorman after he finished a stitch and hold the fat that was removed from the breast. Although this surgery took the expected amount of time which was four hours we didn’t get to start at 11 a.m. due to other surgery’s going on in the OR. This made us finish up at the hospital around 10 p.m.
The next morning we got to sleep in and then had a family breakfast with the Moorman family. All the food made here is beyond delicious! We then went to our first beach on the island of Saint Croix named Buccaneer. At this beach I got to go snorkeling for my very first time with Mrs. Moorman, Stephan, the 13-year-old son and Kitty. I even saw a turtle. On Saturday morning the family including Kitty and I, were undecided on what activity we were going to to do until the older son Andreas optioned jet skiing at the Rainbow beach on the East end of the island. After he proposed his idea it was a definite yes; that was what we were going to spend our Saturday doing. The jet skis were unbelievably fun!
On Monday morning we were back to work. We had three surgery’s to proceed in. The first surgery was removing metal from a man’s mouth. The second surgery was my favorite so far. A older gentleman had 
a melanoma on his top left side forehead that had been removed prior to this surgery, so the man basically had a centimeter deep hole in his forehead. Our job was to perform a skin graft, which means taking skin from one place on the body and covering the wound.
Dr. Moorman decided to take a piece of skin from the left thigh. Dr, Moorman says that he likes best to take skin and make a wound on the same side of the body that already has the wound unless the patient has a preference. The tool used to skin the mans leg was called a Zimmer Electric Dermatome. When thinking of taking skin from a man’s leg to place over another wound you would think it would be fairly large, or at least I thought it would be. The piece of skin was so small and thin, it was astonishing. Last but not least we did a panniculectomy, which is another word for what you may know as which is a tummy tuck. This women had lost over 100 pounds and had excess fat that hung very low so we went in and removed this excess fat. The coolest part was once again getting to scrub in and help Dr. Moorman again.
I could not have asked for a better family and doctor to spend my month with, I have already learned so much crazy unbelievable information. Living with this family I feel very independent, but also at home at the same time due to our meals together and all the late night stories and informational talks. I cannot wait for the rest of my adventure that awaits.
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