Baby, Baby, Baby, Oooh

I don't even know any Justin Bieber songs. I had to look up the lyrics to "Baby" (turns out, they're not that creative, I probably could have guessed). Nevertheless, it's a pretty great pumpkin we did, don't you think? Also, I ate my weight in pumpkin desserts last night. Bad. Idea. Happy Halloween!

Residency 1.4: Gold Team

Well, this is a few days late, sorry. You would think that now that I'm not on inpatient anymore, I'd have plenty of time for updating, but the fact that I don't have to be at the hospital for 13 hours a day means that I have a life: Gold Team dinner at Spin, Sisterhood, pumpkin carving contest (um, yes we did carve a Justin Bieber pumpkin), etc.

Gold Team was so many things, and I'm almost re-exhausted thinking about trying to write about it all. It's Endocrine (mostly new diabetics=easy) and GI (mostly a pain in the butt). There was some cool pathology that we saw (Wilson's disease, protein-losing enteropathies, autoimmune hepatitis) but mostly it was chronic abdominal pain kids and their crazy parents. There was one room I had to stop going into on rounds; I would wait outside, because otherwise I might have become very hateful. I think two things were about equally frustrating. 1) There was nothing medical we could offer these kids; the things that would help make them better (psych therapy, family therapy, etc), we couldn't really offer in the acute inpatient setting so they didn't get any better, and 2) They wouldn't accept that so we kept having to run expensive, meaningless tests to satisfy their neuroses. It's not the kind of medicine I want to practice. And yet it's so entrenched that there's not much changing it, which is also frustrating, because I don't want to bow to the system in defeat.

Apparently Gold Team is like this for everyone and you just laugh it off. And laugh we did. We made up all sorts of jokes to get us through, and I really did enjoy the day to day interactions with the team, in a I-am-so-ready-to-be-done-with-this kind of way.

This month is Teen Clinic (pray for me!)

Week's end

Two days off this week = AWESOME!

Lots of fun things this week: haircut (some might not think so fun, but it was for me), Mass, a night out on the Plaza (new Gap jeans!), trip to the Ethnic Foods and Pastry Sale! (um, YUM!), some walks in the beautiful fall air, sleeping in, a great Castle episode as usual, another good night of Sisterhood (complete with my re-enactment of the entire Handel's Messiah scene from "It's Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown"), and Theology on Tap.

<--Kataifi (shredded filo dough and honey and walnuts and delicious!)


Trying to cram in as much as I can while still working 80 hours a week is pretty exhausting, but we're THIS CLOSE to being done with Gold Team, and I CAN'T FREAKING WAIT. This has been a loooooooonnnnnngggg month. More on that soon. For now, off to the Cashew!

Doing it for the kids

We had our Intern Retreat this weekend. It was a nice break, to have some social time and some protected non-work time to learn more about our class and ourselves. Friday night we hit up the Power and Light district (my first time truly down there) for some Pizza Bar/Howl at the Moon action. It was loud and fun and lots of laughing. At the piano bar, we sang along poorly and dramatically, and even got a message up on the mirror (you just had to beat the previous bid to get your statement up there--unfortunately, I left JUST before they put it up, darn!).


Saturday morning was Myers-Briggs time. I've done it enough that it's fun for me to just sit back and enjoy figuring out what other people are. They even made the program directors participate. The Introverts and Extroverts split up to plan an ideal evening, and I was so relieved that there are other people out there who love slippers and RedBox and pizza instead of going out all night. Some of us said we wouldn't mind one or two friends, but Andie said, "I find myself very fascinating." Also, I am slowly moving across the T/F scale towards the Feeling side, which at first I was surprised at, until I compared the ISFJ (what I am now) with the ISTJ (what I used to be) description and discovered I really am more F than T.

Here's me: desire to be of service and to minister to individual needs...the least hedonistic of all types (sweet tooth notwithstanding)...adhering to an established way of doing things...irritation is turned inward and may be experienced as fatigue and muscle tension (Dr. Hoffman said she needs a monkey on her back to give her a massage when she's on service; she's an ISFJ too)...practical and down-to-earth, and embarrassed when people do not behave as they are supposed to...frequently overworked...etc.

Not quite sure about the "displays a flair for making the interior of the home attractive in a time-honored style" HA!

Silver lining

One night last month, I was in the ED and one of my patients had this huge gaping forehead wound, open down to the skull, and he had even damaged his facial nerve and couldn't raise his eyebrow. He didn't seem bothered by it...until we tried to numb him up. Holy cow. I don't think I've ever seen a kid this upset. Intranasal Versed didn't touch him. It took the magic of the Child Life Representative (aka My Hero) and an hour and 40 minutes to stitch him back up without putting him under. It was my first layered closure (with the first two done by the attending) and my first running subcuticular (a more technical stitch than your typical simple interrupted, for better cosmetic result). It was EXHAUSTING. And when I got done, I felt like a total failure for how difficult the whole thing had become. I felt like I should have been able to somehow keep it from escalating into a screaming meltdown, and I should have sewn more quickly.

Well, fast forward to today, when I got a lovely email from the attending I worked with that night. She had gotten a call from the plastic surgeon who was following him up in clinic, who said that the wound had closed beautifully and he had even regained some nerve function. He was calling to say well done. Totally made my day. Like I'm not totally a failure at this doctor stuff after all.

See you next...

I love fall. I love the changing leaves and jeans weather and football (especially football)! I love the pumpkins and the corn and the apple cider. I love the first sweatshirt day of each new fall, snuggling into it and feeling so cozy. I especially love when sweatshirt day and Birkenstock day overlap, like they did this week. I love the briskness and the smells and the anticipation. Welcome back, old friend. I've missed you.

I miss this