From the diary of a health professional

The House was reunited last weekend. Almost. Sr. Susan Francis was there in spirit (and in photo). Thanks to Michelle (and April and Therese) for giving us a very good reason to come back together and celebrate. I would say it's been a long time since I've laughed that hard, but we must not forget Retarded Vegetables at our last sleepover or Mike's antics during Beyond Balderdash. What I can say is it's been a long time since I've been in such an environment that allows me to be completely who I am and just have fun. The 16 hours of car time and complete lack of sleep was totally worth seeing Bre's "Time of the Month Bunny" and retrying the cup trick and comparing freak triangle muscles. And seeing my very own DNA awarded a doctorate, "with Honors." And taking credit for teaching her about antimicrobial-induced hemolytic anemia in glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficient patients.

In other news, I had my last day of Psychiatry rounds on the Turquoise Team today. Many pastries, desserts, and other goodies were passed around in celebration (any excuse for chocolate cake). I got to share my best and worst moments, which, thankfully were hard to pick due to the paucity of worst and the abundance of best. Sorry, four weeks in psych has me using words like "paucity." I was thinking last night that it can be a very depressing field, if you focus on how messed up some of the kids are, and how you can't fix them completely. On the other hand, we laugh a LOT; you almost have to, but seriously, these kids do some pretty funny things. One schizophrenic boy just started a new med trial, and we're pretty sure he got the med and not the placebo, because he was walking around the unit smiling and saying "I can't stop being happy. It's so WEIRD." We're like, yeah, welcome to normal life. He's the same kid who was watching a movie and all of a sudden told his mom, "I feel like I just ate potato salad." Hmm...gustatory hallucinations. And there are the two day-treatment patients who have crushes on each other and have caused so much drama that the whole milieu is on "Slow Down" for like the 5th time in 7 years. . Every time it comes up, one of the therapists makes an "L" on her forehead because she thinks our patient can do much better than a kid who drinks Benadryl daily to get high. We spend our rounds reviewing things like, "Well, is he at least cute?" Oh, I'm going to miss this kind of entertainment.

P.S. I LOVE The Office, and Bones, and the US WNT and their videos. Yay.