Three Years Later

Three years ago today I began one of the most insane journeys ever. Three years ago I left for the island and medical school. It seems so long ago and yet just like yesterday. I feel like I've learned so much, yet  still know so little. Would I do it all again? No clue.
I feel much more confident, much more capable, even if I still feel like I don't know a thing! I've definitely learned that there is no way one can sit on his laurels and just watch life walk right past you. It will blow past you so fast you won't even know. Each day presents something new and unknown, and it is always a challenge. As soon as you think you're getting it, it's time to move on to something new and equally challenging and completely discombobulating. I could go on for hours but that's it in a nutshell!!

annnnd the Psych students are where??

When finishing up with us, today's Pulmonary attending asked my partner and I to go to the Psych floor to write and H&P for a patient that had been in the hospital for two days. She needed said H&P to be discharged.
All we wanted to know was: "Ummm....where are the psych students? You know, the ones assigned to that floor?"

Saving lives

One of my favorite attendings has lectures/rounds with us twice a week. Every time he asks us "How many lives did you save?" He's awesome.

Head.Wall.Splat

Let me introduce a special breed of patient: the obnoxiously anxious patient.

This is the patient for whom every word you speak is to predict their impending doom. They're so afraid you're going to tell them they have something earth shattering like high blood pressure, cancer, Ebola, or an ingrown hair that they start interrupting you asking "Do I have THIS!!!!???!! AM I GOING TO DIE"...
Uhh, no. I was only going to say that everything looks good. But suddenly I'm delighting in conjuring up ways to kill or maim you, and at the very least wish famine and plague on you and your house after this oh-so-thrilling time we've had to together. These are patients that when the attending is writing their obligatory Xanax scrip, you ask for two or three for yourself because this batsh*t person has just sent your normally fine BP through the roof, and incited a murderous rage within you.

What is it about anxious people that makes them seemingly insist on making you as crazy as they are!!

New Rotation

My new rotation this week was a bit chaotic. The doctor my partner and I are assigned to on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings was not at the hospital this week. So they didnt' really know what to do with us so they put us with an APN and basically we filled out H&Ps Monday and Friday. Tuesday and Thursday mornings we were supposed to be with a pulmonologist, but Tuesday we didn't see him until we were almost due in our Tuesday (and Friday) afternoon clinic. Thursday I didn't even make it to the hospital when I got a call saying "I can't see you guys today, see you Tuesday." So I get off the train and turn around go home...where I don't do much of anything...
Tuesday and Friday afternoons we're in clinic (blegh) with an internist, who, I must say, is a hot mess. But she's hysterical.

Night Call...DONE

There will be no more kvetching about blurred days, loss of orientation, and perpetual lethargy because two days ago I completed my last shift of four weeks of night call!!!

QOTD

You'll never get someone to understand something when his salary is dependent on him not understanding it.

Just two more...

I'll say one good thing for being awake at 3am and sleepy...I did an entire interview in Spanish...didn't have to search for a word...and didn't even realize I was speaking Spanish until I left the room. Win?