Different specialities often have different perspectives when looking at a patient, sometimes to the exclusion of other details. On Friday, I was looking after a patient who had a prolonged procedure for an elective parotidectomy, it went until 7pm and beyond. The mass was the size of a tennis ball so I can understand why it took so long to excise it without damaging the facial nerve.

When talking about this case with Yeu Sheng, her first question was "What type of malignancy was it?" It was only then that I realised that I actually didn't know. I shrugged and said, "I presumed it was malignant, they had to do frozen sections to make sure it didn't spread to the scm. The only thing I care is whether it affects my airway really.... The diagnosis doesn't make a difference to me."

Interesting to see what our blinds spots are if we don't pay attention to all the details :)