More Internal Medicine

So, again, i'm not that excited about my internal medicine rotation and had to pump myself up...i remined myself that i was going to work with a classmate...actually shes a pretty good friend. We're both hard core OBGYN so we have even more in common....i dreamed of googling hard core obgyn madness instead of pneumonia bugs...boring... I figured hey, intenal med won't be so bad because i'll have a partner in crime.....UGH, was i so wrong. Now I know i'm a gunner...i sat in the second row the first two years of med school, well my partner sat in the back row, the very, very back row. She wasn't a gunner at all. In fact, it sorta drove me crazy (this is where billy would add that it REALLY drove me crazy) that she was so "lazy". Sure, technically we get off at 5pm, but if we have 3 more consults in the ER waiting to be admitted, then technically we stay. There is no official rule, but we're scutmonkeys, we stay and do all the work..Duh, this is common medical student sense, right? Wrong. She would leave, I would stay, then I had way more patients to round on and would get there even earlier...It should be illegal to start your day on IM at 9am...we all know to be there at 6am. My favorite, most favorite line of all my clinical rotations was when she asked our hard core attending (who trained at Johns Hopkins) if she could get off early to go get her hair colored!! Yes, this will go down in history. Listen up, if i don't have time to crap then you shouldn't be given time to get your hair highlighted!! If its absolutely necessary then tell the attending you have a doctors appointment because you are hemorrhaging to death and need to be evaluated for a blood transfusion- now then you can get off an hour early, but don't forget to round tomorrow by 6am! thats internal medicine baby

Internal Medicine

Well, jerry is recovering and I was able to return back to ATL to begin my next rotation, Internal Medicine. Basically I was your student doctor if you were admitted for anything lame...aka pneumonia, kidney failure, sepsis, or we don't know whats wrong with you but let us run some tests. I was bored because it involved nothing surgical. If for any reason my patient needed a "procedure" (aka kidney biopsy) I was right at the bedside and ready to cut. I did have a vasavagal response watchng a bone marrow biopsy....Basically I was pretty sick for a week...FOU....aka fever of unknown origin...i took tylenol and got through each day....but this day it was swealtering hot in the room, my attending is literally digging into this womans bone and i started sweating like crazy. I felt like i wiped a bucket of sweat off my upper lip, then my vision was closing in...it was classic...i knew exactly what was occuring with my body and what was about to happen...before i went down, i went out and collapsed in the bathroom with privacy. I was relieved that no one saw this and then had priviledges to harass me all month...i was sick, but i had to work. 5 minutes later i walked back in like i had just answered a "very important page"....not many know that i'm just a measily medical student and i don't get very important pages!!

Family Matters

So I was driving home from a fairly good day at work when my mom called crying saying my dad was sick. Without going into the details, I rushed to the Columbus apartment, packed everything I could in 10 minutes, left a message at school and drove back to Atlanta. Once there, I found a flight back to California for the following morning. In less than 19 hours from the phone call I was at my dad's bedside. Despite all that we know about medicine it can still be a mystery to unravel a diagnosis. He got VIP treatment, flown to the best specialist and several days later was recovering quickly. It was a horrible few days but honestly he is doing great. It was good to see some of my brothers but not under those circumstances. Also, I realized what wimps my siblings are, Aaron turned white, hyperventilated and asked for water when the surgeon was explaining his upcoming procedure, Jody left the room before any blood draws. It was comical. Despite Jody's queasiness, she was sooo good to my dad. We would shave him, give him manicures and pedicures, etc. He said he liked us both there because Jody would make him laugh and I was always honest. Mom bought him an iPod in which David loaded up with classical music. He is doing really well and is ready to finally cut back on work and enjoy life.