Happy Belated Dr. Day!

So, many of you may not know this (I had no idea), but March 30th is National Doctor's Day. A quick web search just revealed to me that this whole Dr's Day business is the work of George H. W. Bush, Sr. Good work, sir! This more than makes up for all mistakes of the past (including the one presently in office.) No offense meant to gentle readers with more conservative sensibilities (esp. my parents, who are moments away from being hit up for gifts. Love ya Mom and Dad!) So, the point to this whole story is that some of my residents actually received presents from their parents - like large fruit baskets with wine and easy cheese and Dansko clogs! So, Mom and Dad and anyone else that would like to buy me presents (size 41, color: cordovan cabrio) when I finally become a doctor - mark your calenders!

Life is much improved from my previous post! The long hours remain, but I am really learning quite a bit. As a medical student, you get to help with the admission of new patients, and then you follow the patients your team admitted throughout the hospital stay and manage all of their care- you see them every morning, report on how they're doing, discuss their labs and any physical exam findings, and then the staff and residents explain what their plan for the patient is and the rationale behind that plan. So far, I've followed patients with severe liver disease (with a huge liver stretching into the pelvis!), acute angina (cardiac chest pain), acute renal failure and a renal artery thrombosis with kidney infarction (a fancy way of saying a clot in the artery going to the kidney which cut off the blood supply to the kidney and caused the kidney to fail)

During my six weeks on this rotation, I get to do 2 overnight calls (30 hours of nonstop fun in the hospital). I did my first on Friday night, and it was really busy - my team received a total of 8 admissions. They all seemed to come at once, too, and that made everything a little stressful. Plus, one patient was coming down off cocaine and was a tad irritable--I saw my first code green (security and pysch had to be called to help manage a patient.) Anyways, it was very interesting and exhausting, and I spent a good part of yesterday sleeping. Though I was awake for enough of the day to go meet and play with a dog named Slim Jim. Raul and I are in talks re: getting a dog sometime in the next year, though that would definitely complicate the move after med school, so we'll see. And today is my day off! Woohoo!

Happy weekend!