Hey Baby

Some awesome things that have at least a tenuous relation to my Obstetrics and Gynecology rotation:

BBQ fritos: brought on by a severe salt craving at 4am. I decided that since I'd only have about half an hour to sleep, and would wake up feeling worse than before thanks to grogginess, I sat in my call room and read this article. And then raced to the ER vending machine. I think there's some sort of problem here, but I'm not sure whether it's my reading the NY times to stay awake, or my insane suggestibility.

Not fainting at surgery: YAY! Thanks gyne surgery and c-sections! I'm over the evil faints. Also thanks to learning the mighty power of crossing my legs - all jokes aside, this is a good quick way to raise your BP a bit.

Best patient t-shirt: At the antenatal clinic, one of our very pregnant patients was wearing a t-shirt reading "All I wanted was a backrub" right above her gigantic pregnant belly. Amazing.

And, the streets of my town continue to amaze:



All in all, this has been a pretty great rotation. Hopefully I'll still feel this way after next week's exam!

I guess I've been busy?

A clarification on the last post: patient breasts are annoying, not my own.

Ok, to fill in the "little gap" between the last post and this one, I'll share a couple of stories.

The first story isn't a story, it's just information. I'm now immersed in something called "clerkship," which is the phase of medicine where someone has decided you've talked enough and now it's time to actually see lots of patients and pretend to be a doctor. Except not at all a doctor, because I'm at a stage where I can't even give some dude with a sore toe an aspirin. Never mind that I'd probably give him ibuprofen instead, and not that he'd listen to me anyways because he's too busy yelling at me about his sore toe to listen. There may have some shouts of "GET ME A REAL DOCTOR." Wow, that did turn into a story.

Other stories/informations:
I still like Family Practice a lot.

Surprisingly, I LOVE Emerg. I like the pace, the rapid exams, the tests, the stitching, the FIXING. It's so nice to see a patient, wonder if an arm is broken, order an xray, see a fracture, and cast it. BOOM we're done. Granted I was working in a community ER rather than in a large, busy ER, but it was pretty great. Also: No fainting when I stitch!

Lately, I've been dictating (yes, I'm now a dictator). By this I mean that I'm speaking into a phone about a patient I've seen, and this all gets recorded and typed up by professional transcriptionists and printed as a neat letter and sent to REAL DOCTORS. In this letter you have to give a concise, coherent story about a patient, what you think is wrong with them, and what you plan to do about it. For me it's actually been pretty nerve-wracking and I spend SO LONG deciding what to say and how I'm going to say it. I have some idea about what is really important and what might be going on, but I am nowhere near confident enough to make a diagnosis most of the time. I've only been doing it for about a week, and it has been getting easier, except for one letter today. I got about halfway done, and then tried to pause the recording. It's funny (not funny at all) how they put the 'pause' button directly beside the 'hang up' button. I ended up having to start again from the very beginning. AND THEN I DID IT AGAIN. So frustrating.

Aside from medicine, I've actually been having a pretty good time in life. I've been trying to spend lots of time at home so the husband and the cat feel loved. I've been seeing family fairly regularly. I've been seeing friends nowhere near often enough. But I've been pretty happy, for the most part. And now that it's sunny and warming up, hopefully I'll keep the good stretch going. Although hopefully with more friends time.