sunday am plea

Please, please wear your seat belts. Drive five miles slower. Stop talking or texting or putting on make-up or whatever is taking your focus off the road.

I hate to quote my dad, but it beats walking.

smacks forehead

Truly have believed it was a Beaver retractor ever since I first heard the term on Gyn surgery. I promise I am not the only one. And yes, we quietly rolled our eyes at the supposed irony. Come to find out today from the ever helpful Surgical Recall it’s a Deaver retractor. No. Way. #surgicalrecallprovesitsworththeweight

hard to fathom

I really can’t get over the feeling and the atmosphere that a trauma case creates in the OR. The tragedy of the trauma is one thing. But then all of these people scurrying around just doing what they are trained to do for someone they never knew existed and never knew would need their help that day. It’s just so big to wrap my head around that I don’t even think I can write what I mean. It is pretty incredible to be the people that the whole world knows to go to when they need health care and life-saving, that there is a team capable of doing that. I don’t think the word privilege describes it. I’m going to be needing to peruse the dictionary to find the right one.

boom

“What is the first place jaundice shows up?”

“Under the tongue.”

“Very good, what’s your name?”

It was a good thing to be asked my name in this situation! It was a resident I hadn’t worked with and I think it meant he was impressed. I wish it was always easy to whip out the right random fact from Surgical Recall I just happened to stumble upon the day before.

by all accounts, he’s the man

Quotes from the surgery clerkship director:

You’re a physician first, before being a cardiologist or a surgeon or a radiologist. First you’re a physician.

Physicians are held to a different level of professionalism than others in society, even outside of the hospital.

At the same time, he’s willing to call himself a glorified plumber =)

shaky third year hands

Probably shouldn’t say things like “Oh no” when you are putting a stitch in a guy’s neck. It’s hard to be confident when you feel like you could puncture his carotid artery! My gloves were drenched in sweat when I took them off.

Thank goodness that guy was more obliging than the lady whose vein I missed on the first poke. Tried to “just get it done” like my preceptor says and tried moving the needle around a bit, but this ended with her protesting “Um whatever you’re doing, can you not do that?” Needless to say I withdrew the needle and we got no blood from her (insert embarrassed face).

 

87-year old humor

“Well I’m on the right side of the grass that’s for sure. But I don’t buy green bananas anymore.”

perspective

The scene is dinner with two high school friends and their boyfriends, all college-educated, all working the type of jobs that most twenty-somethings work. No investment bankers in the bunch. No big-city money.

The conversation is me becoming a pediatrician. I mention how my family doctor has been talking about getting reimbursed from Medicare and how he doesn’t know how pediatricians do it, since so many of them accept Medicaid and since Medicaid reimburses so little. I say something flippant like “How am I supposed to make enough money?”

The response is “Enough money for who?” And my friend is right. Yes Medicaid reimburses too little. Doctors have to bill enough to cover all the overhead that includes the office space and the nurses’ salaries and the receptionists’ salaries and oh hey maybe their salaries too! That might mean patients are limited to 15 minute appointments which of course run into twenty minutes which means your nine hour work day becomes ten and that’s not even including paperwork. Yes a good portion of my money will be going towards interest and loans for years. But the fact of the matter is, when I become a “real MD” with a practice (or something…), I’ll be making more than two of these friends combined. And sometimes they work through lunch or come in early or stay late. And they have loans too. So could my salary be higher with less of a challenge earning it? Yes. But I will have food. And a house. And insurance. And a smartphone. That’s good money.

being honest

Kind of awkward to admit that you’ve checked a patient’s left hand for a wedding ring in the middle of history-taking. Apparently any sign of a good conversation causes the reflex in me…

(For the record, he had a ring on. And I wouldn’t have done anything differently had he not.)

a silly story about caffeine

It was pretty amusing for my attending (who also happened to be the chief resident) to buy us coffee in the middle of our rounds since our next stop was the ICU. We all entered carrying our cups but the next thing you know the head ICU attending (or something equally important) is walking towards us. Our chief tells us to hide all the coffee cups somewhere, anywhere! Our scurry was faster and more synchronized than they would be in a code situation. The coffee found refuge in the locker room and we returned to get the cups twenty minutes later, now lukewarm enough to drink. Timing’s everything.