Brains and Bobas

"From Arapahoe High School, a Creighton University graduate, yes, she is a Bluejay...Ladies and gentleman..." My attending is so weird. That's how he introduced me to present our case at case conference today. He likes to guess the mascots of our patients' schools, but he doesn't phrase it like a question. It goes something like this: "East High School, home of the...Eagles." And then they'll make a face and say, "Noooo." It's hysterical. He took me and the residents out to lunch today, to some local Thai place, where I had the opportunity to try bobas for the first time. Little tapioca balls in the bottom of your drink, made in any variety of flavors (the drink, not the bobas). Basically...disgusting!!! But, I'm glad I tried it. Add it to the list.

One week into neuro, way too much to learn, a few really sick kiddos. But I like it, not as much as I instantly liked psych, but it's growing on me. Check back in three weeks.

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.

Here's a tip for you...

When you're giving a presentation, try not to kick the outlet and unplug the computer in the middle of it. It tends to disrupt the flow.

Saturday morning post

Buckle in, this is going to be random:

Yesterday, one of the therapists on the wards said, "Laura, please tell me you're going into psychiatry. You're so good at it." Totally made my day. Although on Thursday, one of our patients had pink eye, and the attending is all staring at it from five feet away going, "I think it's a stye" and I'm like "I want to touch it so bad." So I got some gloves, poked, prodded, and promptly diagnosed her with pink eye, sent her to her PCP and she got some antibiotic ointment and came back clear as a whistle the next day. So yeah, psychiatry is nice, but I guess not hands-on enough for me. And it's hard, to see kid after kid come in with suicide attempts. I'm not saying it's easier to treat kid after kid with chronic kidney disease or cancer, but...at least we've seen some kids get better. For every new admit, we've had a discharge, and it's fun to see them getting better.

Last weekend, we beat the 2-time-defending-league-champion football team, including their foul-mouthed receiver that made me think violent thoughts. I threw the first touchdown pass, cause it was a girl play (every 4th play), though it was a floater, and only not intercepted due to Andy's mad hops. Oh man, it was fun.

Finally rented Juno last night. I know everyone said it was hysterical, but maybe all the lines had already been revealed or maybe I'm just too deep for light fun, but I found myself more appreciating the drama of it than the humor (although the "nasty eye" was classic). The tragedy of teenage pregnancy and prevalence of abortion, the miracle of new life, the heartache of divorce, the support of a family--those were the things that touched me. Although the image of drinking one's weight in Sunny D was certainly poignant as well. Maybe I'm just a sap. Although I can hear Kelly watching it this morning, and it's a little more funny. Maybe it was just my mood.

Saw "A Man For All Seasons" at the seminary last weekend. So high quality. Just witty dialogue, powerful story, men in tights. Fantastic.

Bones and Women's Murder Club are back, and my addiction to The Office has been fueled by cranking through Seasons 1 and 2 in two weeks (good thing I'm on my psych rotation and not surgery). So good.

Our hidden capes

"I want to dedicate this award to my son, who has been wearing a Superman costume for the past 47 days."
"Yay Supermommy!" The 4-year-old yells from the back. We all laugh.
"Every day he asks me to tell him stories of people who need 'Help, help!'" More laughs. "Lots of people told him that they liked his cape when they came in, but the truth is that we all wear capes underneath our coats."

It's daunting. Knowing that in 3 days, I will become my patient's biggest advocate, the member of their health care team that sees them the most, knows the most about them. No matter how much we remind them that we are still only students, we become "Doc" to them. We will become, in a very real sense, heroes. Heroes who have to break the news of cancer to a man with 4 small children at home. Heroes who get to assist on emergency surgery to save someone's life. Heroes who bring their patients ice cream sandwiches, and who understand what it's like to be in an unfamiliar environment, with everyone speaking a language you don't understand, not knowing what will happen to you. It's daunting. And it's thrilling. I am about to embark on a journey that will teach me more and push me more than I would have ever dreamed. I will have the opportunity to touch people in their most vulnerable moments, to see real healing. It's a calling that has few equals in this world, and I don't say that out of arrogance, because I question every day whether I have what it takes, and why God brought me here. I say it out of reverence and awe for the things I know I will experience in my career, for the gift of being a physician. I hope that I will be able to share some of it with all of you, but the longer I'm in this field, the more I realize how hard it is for outsiders to understand the great responsibility we hold, the gravity of our decisions, the toll it takes on us, but how we wouldn't trade it for anything. (Again, I say that not out of arrogance, but awe.)

The resident (Supermommy) closed by thanking the students she'd had the chance to work with, commenting that many times she found her patients' rooms empty when she went looking for them. The students had taken their patients for a walk around the hospital. "And as they walked," she said, "I could just see a flash of red underneath their short white coats."

Brian Larkin Sunday

Hazzah for a near perfect Sunday. Started with a low key morning with the comics, followed by a near perfect football game (except for the extra point I dropped because my hair was in my eyes) in which we mercy-ruled the other team and posted a shut-out. Our defense was so on. That alone would have been a day-maker. But then I got to spend the rest of the day enjoying the beautiful sunshine at Wash Park playing volleyball. And now I am just killing time until school starts tomorrow, might read a book or watch a movie.

My roommate and I were just talking about how we're so excited to take a giant step towards becoming normal people. Not sure if that needs clarification. See, when all you do is study all the time, not only are you a hermit, but when you do show your face in social situations, you don't have anything to talk about except what you studied that day, and any mention of virtually anything just triggers a dozen word-associations to medical terms and conditions. But now, as third years, our studying will consist of interacting with real people, not books (at least not solely books), and when we get off work (granted, that won't happen very often), we are done. No longer hermits, just workaholics, but at least we'll now have something to talk about, because sick people (especially sick people in the psych ward, which is our first rotation) are always interesting.

I don't know if this holds any weight, but I read "90 Minutes of Heaven" and his description of heaven is exactly how I pictured it. Constant joy, surrounded by people we love who have been a part of our spiritual journey, not given the chance to miss anything about earth because all we're experiencing is perfection. A decent read, if you get a chance.

RedBox Recommendations--Dan in Real Life. Pretty funny and totally real people and real conversations. "You are a MURDERER of love!!!!!" Hahaha.

True Devotion

"a lady called to me, so blessed, so lovely
that I implored to serve at her command." (Canto II-Inferno)

Ignoring for a moment my nerdiness at reading the Divine Comedy during my week off...
I was really struck by this line; although Virgil is describing Beatrice, I thought it appropriate for Mary as well. It falls right in line with "True Devotion" where St. Louis says that slavery to Mary is not something we are forced to do, but something we gladly submit ourselves to out of love. I didn't quite understand that. Serving someone out of love, yes. Slavery? Not so much. But this quote made me think of people that I love and how, if they were sick or in need, I would ask how I could serve them. Then go exponentially beyond that both in love and in worthiness of the person I'm serving, and I can see where slavery might be a privilege. Granted, it's still hard for me to picture Mary in my head, the crown jewel of creation. It's beyond me, but if I picture the most blessed, lovely woman, and then push it even further, how could I not implore to serve her, especially when her command is "Do whatever He tells you." Gives me something to think about the next time I do my Total Consecration.