Emergency!!

I'm about a week into my last (!!!!) rotation: Emergency Medicine. I figured that this would be a good one to end with because my interest in doing another rotation is pretty much nil, and this would at least keep me moving and doing something. And so far that has indeed, happened which has been great. The schedule? Not so much. Because of interviews (mine and everyone else's) what is normally four or five overnights in a row, followed by the name number of morning shifts, and the same number of day shifts, and totally been thrown askew. Everybody is gone at random times, and as such the schedule is totally random. It messes with my sleep schedule (I know, I just have it so rough). 

Got to incise and rain and abscess. Had done it before in surgery, but they patient was unconscious. This guy was awake.

Had a rather strange occurrence, a patient came in for whatever reason with her mother. Mother had been there for about four hours (and I saw her sitting more or less content and comfortable) when she decided to inform the staff that she had been suffering from gastritis for about a week and needed to be seen. I'm not sure what to make of that.

So a full-blown tonic-clonic seizure, which was kind of cool.

Had more than one schizophrenic patient (one with pronounced tardive dyskinesia) who proceeded to make their presence very well known, which for me as a future (hopefully) psychiatrist was good experience and a bit interesting.

I've been on the interview trail for the past month as well...and goodness between the travel and the interviews themselves and working that around my rotation schedule it has definitely been interesting. They have for the most part been fun and enjoyable. But there's always this feeling of inadequacy within me, and I have no idea how it's going to turn out. Stay tuned for updates.

This and that...

Just some random thoughts from my patient encounters in the past week or so.

It's realllly bad when you let out an SBD and the room suddenly smells better than it did a second ago. Why? Because the patient in the room smells like a rabbit cage. I used to have rabbits and their cages had a very distinct smell.

Why do you need to ask someone who smells like an ash tray, with wheezing you can hear from across the room, whether or not they smoke?!? DUH!!! Of course they smoke! The better question is probably how many cigarettes they smoke per day!

A patient's spouse commenting on one of the side effects of ketoconazole, which is being used for a patient's prostate cancer: "Is that why he don't get horny? You gotta do something about that." Do I laugh, or wet myself??

Heme/Onc...

...not really my favorite I have to say. The subject matter is somewhat interesting, but at this point I must confess to some senioritis and I just am not interested. To boot, I work with two different doctors, both of whom can annoy me in their own special way. The first is an older doctor who thinks he is absolutely hilarious, and can talk up a storm about absolutely nothing. I swear I spend an extra hour at the hospital than I need to just because he's yacking about nothing. The second thinks he's really hilarious, and likes to joke in the form of harassment. At 7:15 in the morning I'm not always in the mood for it...really not in the mood for it.  That's not to say I'm complaining, but with the first doc especially I don't feel like I get to do anything. I just follow him around the clinic and the hospital for about eight hours. And I don't get to even write a note, or listen to a heart. I'm six weeks away from being done with medical school. I would like to think I could at least do something that simple.