Today's Dinner:

Rump roast. Well done. Whose rump? Mine and my surgery mates. I do not appreciate having to eat somebody else's crow.

Today's Awesome Surgery

Secondary to a pneumothorax, and emphysema, I was able to scrub in a thoracotomy. We removed the part of the upper lobe of the right lung that had blebs the size of golf balls. It was intense!! I loved every minute of it. I had never seen lungs in a living person before!

Election Night

It was a nasty night weather-wise in Chicago last night. I didn't want to go anywhere, and was fortunate that  a few friends and I watched the returns from my place. We were all over the place on our political ideas, and yet we all managed to get along and have a good time, understanding this is the process that has kept us going. I looked out the window this morning and the sky was still up there.  Life will go on, and the world will continue turning.

I can't recall how many people I wanted to smack over the last few months for various idiotic things posted on Facebook basically saying "You should vote for X because if you don't it will be the end of America" or "Well because your this, this, or that, then you should vote for Y because how can you vote for X if you believe what you believe??!?"  Really? You’ve apparently decided that I am incapable of making up my own mind. Elections and airport security highlight just how stupid and short-sighted people can really be. 

-- "Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups." ~   George Carlin

Good to know?

Incident from Friday night:

Mr. Nicks: "Hey man, you look like you know where to find good coke. Can you help me out man I'm dying for some coke." My first thought was dude just go to the bar and get one. THEN I realized OHHHH! he wasn't talking about the Cola variety.

Me: " Man I'm sorry I couldn't even begin to tell you where to find some."
Perhaps I should have sent him to Englewood or Gresham, where the cracked variety can be easily located at any street corner.

Sssssahhhhhh

My first Saturday off in a month. Wow what a difference! First thing I did this morning was to scrub my apartment top to bottom, and did it need it!!!!!!

It was nice to be able to enjoy my Friday night with friends in River North--though I stayed far longer than I intended and ended up taking a cab back home.

Eavesdropping

It's amazing what you hear when people don't think you're listening. For instance, the first week of my ortho float the very Mexican Medical Assistants had no clue that this güero understands Spanish well enough to hear you slagging him from the other room. Obviously it doesn't dawn on these ladies that medical students become their bosses--shortly.

Ortho/Musculoskeletal Clinic

This is my last full week of ortho clinic. Because I'm nice and so are my rotation partners I've offered to step in and cover for them on two days when they need to be out of town. Because I've already done the rotation, two extra days in ortho clinic won't be a big deal. But I am looking forward to being done with it every day. It is long, intense, and has been a great learning experience, basically because we have been thrown into the deep end of the pool and told to sink or swim. So we started swimming. I think that's the best way to learn. The attending has laid out his requirements, and you do it. See one. Do one. Teach one. He's very hands off. If he doesn't want you to do it, he won't let you, but other than that it is basically we, the students, who are actually "practicing" medicine in the clinic, and the attending usually approves our choices. Maybe we're learning something??

I've learned how to do knee injections, shoulder injections, and trigger point injections on the back and neck. It's amazing how after doing it a few times, I don't think anything now of sticking a 1.5 inch needle into somebody's knee. The first time I was terrified. Sometimes I still need to stick twice, but I've gotten pretty good at finding the spot, even on tough knees. I've also significantly improved my radiograph reading skills. It's basically a necessity as when I present a patient to my attending he pulls up the radiograph and says ok, show me the problem. After a round or two of "uhhhh, I can't see anything" I started staring at them for a while, and started to see problems. Sometimes I still don't quite make out where the fracture is, or what the problem is, as on occasion they appear invisible to my eye, but I feel much more confident.

This has probably been my first no-holes-barred introduction into insanity medicine. We have easily seen 100+ patients some days. There are anywhere between 4 and 6 people handling patients in the clinic, so do the math.

Yesterday was quite hectic and frustrating because for whatever reason (cough cough lazy, overly-socializing receptionists cough cough) patients scheduled for 1pm, who had checked in at 1230, weren't brought back to the clinic until after 1:45. All the while we are literally sitting around twiddling our thumbs wondering where in the world our patients are, and having to accept the reality that we will not be leaving before 6:30. Oh goody. Throw on top of that the usual dose of hospital politics and drama from that person (and every group has one) and it was just a frenetic afternoon. Sometimes you just gotta dance.