Um...duh?

So let me get this straight...you've bad more than twenty sexual partners this year. And you've never used protection. Remind me why you're surprised that you have syphilis???

First Time in a While

For the first time in a while today I took a bus downtown (amongst other places I went shopping today) to do some holiday shopping. Why haven't I done this much recently you may ask? Residency.

It was quite lovely. Just getting on the bus (for the first six months I lived in Chicago I did not have a car, no longer an option and I enjoyed that) was a throwback to when I was new to this city that I love and it was exciting--my own personal renaissance--and it's much less stressful. Curse you medicine for making me get up obnoxiously early. I still enjoy using the bus and train, so to be able to look out the window and just enjoy the parks and buildings that I was being driven by was nice. Then I moseyed around the shopping streets and stores, taking it all in. I didn't have any particular goals for my shopping, but I found some nice things for folks.

Residency is rolling right along, rather nice in fact. I'm done with a month of medicine --and went so far as to take the last week off of that rotation to avoid committing a homicide or slitting my wrists (seriously you medicine folk, you're crazy). And now I'm doing a month of inpatient psychiatry. Which I'm loving. My attending is scheduled to take several days of vacation after Christmas, so I don't know what I'm going to do.

Peeeeeep

Carrying a pager must be like having a child. It's chained to your side. It never stops making noise...and when it does you worry why it's being so quiet. If you ask it to wait because you're busy it chirps every two minutes until you give it attention. You can't turn it off because somebody may die. And at the end of the day, when it's time to be quiet, you look at it and say "if you make just one more peep"...what does it do? It peeps. 

Fellow resident: can we put patient on depakote sprinkles??? Once in my life I want to order depakote sprinkles!! ...or a ketamine dart. That would be fun. 

Back on Medicine

So I'm back on medicine. And as expected, I am miserable. It's just not my thing. Getting up at 4:30 in the morning with the knowledge that I may not get home until after six, seven, even NINE some nights just makes me hate life.

And yesterday some dimwit nurse called me to tell me that one of my patients had refused their 2pm heparin dose. She told me this at 4pm....

A few days ago a unit secretary called to tell me that one of my patients was returning from the OR, and would I mind putting in a diet order because the nurse was asking. When I said (cheerfully) that I did it almost an hour ago, the secretary said "OH! Ok, I'll look."....why neither the secretary or the nurse bothered to look irks me.

Today I had not one, not two, but three patients who claim to be Jesus...I think they're all lying, because none of them could turn that glass of water into the wine that was much needed after today.

Derp

You spend an hour ripping out old caulk that's probably been there since the bathroom was remodeled (I'm guessing early Dubya years)...and get all proud about how perfect your new WHITE caulk job is...and then you look at the drying result...and realize you bought clear-drying caulk...Derp.

Also derping up your day is the fact that a tire picks up a nice-looking bolt. Somehow the tire has yet to go flat, many hours afterward (perhaps unbeknownst to me the car has runflats?). I try to take it to my usual tire place, where they will patch-plug the tire. But it's Sunday, and they're not open. So I have to get creative. The only place open is a Pepboys, ok great. I get there...and they (a huge place) only plug a tire. Not on my car thank you very much. Grrrrr. Derp. As of this moment the car is parked in a spot of the garage that nobody ever parks in, in anticipation of potentially having to swap out the tire for the spare.