resurfacing

Ah, it's been a while. For the past 2 months I've been a slave to surgery. First Urology and then Transplant. My shelf was Friday and now I'm on spring break (wait...is it snowing?). Urology was a lot of fun and I got to participate in a lot of cool cases. I got to use a scalpel to open someone up. They let me cauterize between the aorta and the renal artery (I think the resident was more nervous than I was), and I got to do pretty much an entire cystoscopy and hydrodistention by myself. As far as I know, all of these patients are still alive and well :) Oh, and I learned how to do a pretty wicked awesome running subcuticular suture.

Transplant wasn't as much fun, but the hours were a little better. I worked between 12-15 hour days on urology, and then 10-12 hour days on transplant. Unfortunately I didn't get to see an actual transplant while I was on transplant, just a lot of cholecystectomies and liver resections. I did get to take care of some pretty interesting/sick patients though. It's pretty cool to see someone on the brink of death who gets a whole new life after receiving a new organ. By the way, if you're not an organ donor, you should do it....and make sure your family knows!

So yeah, that's what I've been up to for the past 2 months. What else is new? Um....oh yeah....having a baby. But don't expect me to be all ooey gooey annoying about it, because that's just annoying. And to be quite honest, I don't really have time to think about it and get all sentimental and introspective. And I won't be posting any belly pictures on facebook, so you can just forget about that.

More updates to come over the next week. My next adventure is trying to figure out what I want to do with my life. Apparently it gets a little more complicated than just being "a doctor."

I delivered my third placenta today.

Immediately following, I resumed eating my cherry cobbler.

Resemblance?

Peds Wrap Up

Today was my last day on pediatrics. I'm kind of glad it's over, but it wasn't as bad as I had imagined.

I actually had a few cool/new experiences on peds:
1. Call - essentially means spending the night in the hospital in case anything exciting happens over night. The two times I took call....nothing exciting happened, so I slept from midnight to 5am, and went to rounds greasy and with bad breath. It's never a good thing when you drink coffee to try to hide your morning breath. Next time I'll bring a toothbrush.

2. Drawing blood - I didn't do this to a patient, but one of the interns decided that I should learn how to do this.....on HIM. Crazy person. (For a little background, I hate needles. I passed out in the parking garage at KU after getting my immunizations before starting med school.) It turned out to be okay though and I think I did a fairly decent job. I got the vein on the first try and Dr. Crazy Man said that it didn't hurt.

3. Scalpel Please - we had a patient with a deep abscess that we decided should be drained and cultured. You couldn't really see it just by looking, but you could definitely feel it. The attending and the resident decided that I should be the one to weild the scalpel. This made me a wee bit nervous. Expecially after they both pointed out that the abscess was near the spinal cord, you know, so as to remind me that one slip of the hand could cause some serious neurological problems. I managed though. We got enough goo to get a good culture and I'm pretty sure the kid walked out okay.

So, those were my cool peds experiences. I also got to spend some time in peds cardiology which was way cool. If I had to pick a specialty right now, it would be at the top of my list. I might have to do adult cardiology though because I don't know if I could make it through 3 years of general peds residency.

I'm starting on OB/GYN next week. I think it will be exciting delivering babies and all, but I've heard that the schedule is pretty demanding. If I'm reading the schedule right, I'll be on the night shift for the first week - which means I'll get to the floor at 6:30pm and stay until 8:00 the next morning. I might not see Danny for a while :(

In other news....the elections happened. Not the outcome I had hoped for, but I'm trying to remain optimistic. Obama won a few brownie points with me today when he said that they wanted to adopt a shelter dog for their new pet. For a moment I imagined a one eyed, shaggy dog like Charlie running rampant through the White House....it made me smile.

Differential Update

I had previously diagnosed myself with prinzmetal angina - I have now changed the diagnosis to precordial catch syndrome. This means that I'm not going to die of an MI any time soon.

My spot that looked like a basal cell has spontaneously regressed. I would have preferred the spot that looks like squamous cell to have regressed, but I'll take what I can get.

I briefly diagnosed myself with meningitis, then I drank some coffee and my symptoms went away. I am DEPENDENT!!!!

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!

The View

UGHHHH! Why do I watch this show!?!? They should really call it "We Hate Conservatives" or "Lets Not Let Elizabeth Get a Word In Because We Don't Agree With Her." Seriously! Today they were being all condescending (shocking) and asked Elizabeth why she was resorting to "smearing" Barack Obama. And by "smearing" they were referring to the fact that Elizabeth has concerns because Obama has ties to William Ayers. Okay. I think that it is a legitimate concern when someone running for president of the cotton pickin' United States has ties with/common interests as/runs in the same circles as a KNOWN TERRORIST. An unabashed terrorist with no remorse. How is this "smearing?" Isn't smearing when you bring up something rather inconsequential or from like 40 years ago and try to make a big thing about it? Whoopi tried to make the argument that Obama and Ayers were acquaintances in 2002....like it was ancient history and terrorism is some sort of self-limiting condition that you grow out of. Then Whoopi, Sherri and Barbara lit into Elizabeth like she was some sort of idiot to even CARE that Obama has these ties. Why do I watch this show? Cotton Pickin'! Oh....and I'd like to know what kind of credentials Whoopi has that she thinks herself the grand master of politics....besides being the center square on Hollywood Squares.

Photo rundown

I had the last week off, which was fantabulous.

Here is a picture from our lazy Friday morning (Danny took the day off so we could hang out).

We went to St. Joe on Friday afternoon to see some sights and hear Jason Upton at Word of Life Church. Here's a random picture from a creepy museum.

And a random picture from a creepy antique store.

We didn't make it to the Jesse James museum because they had already switched to "winter hours," closing early. Um, yeah....winter hours? 85 degrees people....85 degrees. We did make it to the Pony Express Museum. Did you know that the Pony Express only operated for 19 months before the company went bankrupt? Oh snap! My blog just got all edumacational!

Oh, and we interrupted these guys when we sat down at a picnic table to enjoy some ice cream. Danny made me take the picture.

I was also able to spend some time with my besties and their adorable children.

(This is Rachel and Carmen's daughter Eva)

(Julie's Daughter, Alexis)


(Ellie and Alexis)

(Eva at Louisburg Cider Mill)

(Ellie at the Cider Mill - she usually doesn't like to smile for me, so this was a treat!)