Internship


Well, it has been a while since I have written and that's because I have started my internship, worked pretty hard, and to midnight 3 days this past week, and we moved a week ago (though we are still living out of boxes since our carpet is being changed tomorrow.
I've been doing clinics and ER shifts- so a lot of healthy-sick patients (i.e patients with chronic diseases who are not acutely ill) and a bunch of completely healthy patients (in the ER) and 3 or4 pretty sick kids (in the ER as well).
Since we are off to go to a birthday party, here is an email I wrote earlier this week to someone. As for music, reading movies - haven't done any at all since this started.


"So i haven't spoken to either of you in the last week or so - and since all 3 of the clinics I tired to go to this morning were cancelled, i have a while to do nothing (for the first time since Saturday morning).
So i started my residency this past Saturday. Despite doing outpatient for this month (outpatient means i have to be in at 8:30 AM Monday to Friday for lecture, then clinic from 9:30 till about 12-1230, then another clinic from 1 until whenever it ends... which can be anywhere from 3:30 if the last patients don't show up until 5:30 or 6 - it sort of depends on when you get to see your patients.... the way it works is that these are all sub-specialty clinics - like cardiology, pulmonology etc etc and when a patient comes their folder gets thrown on the table in the conference room and then us residents there just grab patients and go see them, then present and go over the plan with the attending and hopefully learn something in the process (very attending dependent if you will learn anything or just do monkey-work - but most are very good about teaching) and in addition to this stuff Mon-Fri, we have some ER shifts - a few 12 hour shifts on weekends and some 6-midnight shifts during the week). Anyways, to conclude that sentence i started 8 or 9 lines up, despite being on outpatient, one of the lighter rotations, I have worked more than the people on inpatient until this point since my ER shifts were very front loaded - i had 3 in the first 4 days of residency.
Started off on Saturday with a 10-10 shift (and despite loving the er, which you guys both know is what i want to eventually do - the shifts are very slow especially if there aren't that many patients since then you are just sitting around for bits of time with nothing to do). Anyways, on Sunday we moved to Riverdale - our apartment is bigger - its a nice sized 2 bedroom which is bigger than the one we used to have and we even have a nice sized balcony (which i cant wait to sit out and grill on) but the one problem is since they are changing our carpet sometime this week or next we have yet to get a chance to unpack so we have boxes everywhere (which Sammy loves pulling down on himself) Anyways, we haven't yet unpacked and the place is a mess and our kitchen is tiny so i need to build us some shelving.
Anyways, we moved on Sunday, which took all day despite the fact that we moved a total of 5 miles or so. Anyways- Monday i had a full day of clinic and then a 6-12 er shift and on July 4th i had a noon-midnight er shift. yesterday was the first day i was home b4 midnight. craziness. but i am off the rest oft he weekends in July since i had my 2 weekend shifts already (sat and july 4th).

actually going to run to go get trained for the x-rays on line now - i'll continue this later

im back - got my training and got my access card fixed.

anyways - the rest of the month shouldn't be so bad for me and should give me time to settle in to our new place.

being a doctor is weird. in the Ed when i present the patient to the attending - they are like, "what do you want to do?" and while they might make some suggestions if i don't think of it, pretty much they let us do what we want - deciding what kids get admitted to the hospital, suturing of stitches and they completely trust us to dose medications and prescriptions correctly (which by the way - is the coolest and the weirdest thing -signing prescriptions).

anyways, i'm having a good time so far - only had 2 or 3 really sick patients in the ER - two of whom are actually still here as inpatients - one with a bad asthma attack and one with chronic epididymitis - i have never seen a testicle swollen that large - and on a 2 year old kid nonetheless... i felt so bad this kid must be in so much pain.....

and you got to love how people leave things out of their medical history - in renal clinic yesterday i saw a kid who completely left out the fact that he had a testicle removed - something i only picked up on exam - and i am damn Glad i did a genital exam on this kid, since if the attending would have found out the kid only had one testicle and i didn't bring that up, that would have been very bad.

anyways- i have heme/onc clinic this afternoon - not sure if that is a happy or sad clinic - it is mostly kids with/who had cancer --> but if they are coming in for regular scheduled outpatient visits they aren't that sick and might be in remission."

i have my regular clinic this week - so I will be meeting my new patients of whom I will be their regular doctor (yep, i got business cards!)

later folks!