Enough of the politics....back to the medicine

I've been on peds now for the past week. Like with any new experience, the first few days were scary and I was unsure of what in the bejibbers I was supposed to be doing. This is my first inpatient experience and it is so much different than the outpatient experiences I've had so far. The scariest part is the presenting to attendings. I've done tons of presenting by now, but not in front of the team. So now, instead of just the attending listening to me blubber my way through a patient history, we've got several residents, social workers, pharmacists, nurses and other students as an audience for my stupidness.

The first day was by far the worst, but it always is. I'd never really been through an inpatient presentation before and was unsure of what all to include about this uber-complicated case. The attending was really nice though and managed to guide me through it, sparing my fragile confidence for the time being. So at this point I'm relieved because my big speaking gig in front of the team is over, now we get to go in and see the patient....cake. We're getting ready to go in the patient's room, but before we can go in, we have to do the little alcohol foam hand stuff on the wall. If you've seen the new Batman movie, you know what I'm talking about - hilarious. Anyway, so I go to get my hand foam, but the dispenser is different than the one I always used in my previous clinic. So instead of squirting foam into my hand, I managed to manipulate the dispenser in such a way that caused an explosion of foam to shoot out the side and hit the attending in the head. Nice work Christi. Fortunately....again....she was super nice and acted like she hadn't noticed. I'm sure the rest of the team was snickering....heck, I would laugh too if I saw someone do that. In fact, I would probably be rolling on the floor.

I managed to live through the first day, and things have been looking up ever since. I've managed to put together decent presentations for rounds and have been able to answer the questions that the attendings have "pimped" me on. In fact, I had the answer to a completely random question that one of the attendings was wondering out loud about....the incidence of sarcoidosis. I had just looked it up a few minutes before rounds and was able to give him the answer like it was no big thing. I love it when that happens! Woot woot! (Is it still cool to say that?)

In the past week, I've been on overnight call twice. This is a crazy thing, but I'd better get used to it now, because when I'm a resident it will be all to common an occurrence. When you're on overnight call, you get to the hospital at 6:00am and stay until 10:00-11:00 the following morning. That's 28 hours, and I've done 2 of these shifts in the past week in addition to my regularly scheduled 8 hour days. I'm a machine! Call isn't quite as interesting as it sounds, but it allows me the opportunity to use super-cool doctory phrases like: "I'm post call" or "I just pulled a 30." Okay, I totally made that last one up, but doesn't it sound good? If you overheard me say that (while wearing scrubs, a stethoscope and looking all together disheveled) you would probably think that I was way cool - which is my ultimate goal in life :) The only thing bad about call is the following morning when you're greasy and haven't brushed your teeth in forever. Next time I'll bring a tooth brush and those cute little face blotting papers. Although someone told me today that I looked good for being post call. I don't know if this was a complement, or if I just always look like I've been run over by a bus.

Anyhow....that's what's been going on with me for the past week. Peace out!