Grow up
Wisdom calls aloud in the street…
“How long will you simple ones love your simple ways?
How long will mockers delight in mockery and fools hate knowledge?
If you had responded to my rebuke, I would have poured out my heart to you and made my thoughts known to you.”
Prov. 1
Suturing
Today I got to suture my first patient. It was during my plastic surgery rotation. It was on his face. Did I mention it was the first time I ever sutured a person? My resident then left me to go to morning rounds, while I was by myself suturing the lacerations.
Please refrain from drinking and driving if you do not want a random newb med student suturing your face. This includes motorcycles and ATV’s. It’s kinda cool for us, but it’s not cool for you.
My sutures looked okay, but I’m going to check them tomorrow to see if they got infected. They were all covered by the C-collar today, so I couldn’t tell how the wounds looked. I’m so worried if they got infected. A part of me is tempted to suture one stitch on my arm to see how it would heal, or at least poke the needle through to the dermal layer.
Neurosurgery summary!
My two weeks of neurosurgery are over. Thoughts: It was my first surgical rotation, where I got a taste of the tortures of standing up for hours, sometimes scrubbed in, and after a 6 hour surgery, being rewarded with: holding down a piece of string while a resident makes ugly sutures. Thanks. When I get the sign that I passed my neurosurgery rotation I can write a little more dirt but until then, I think I should keep my lips sealed for a bit. LOL. Justtt in case. I’ll write my positives though:
WOW. Extremely exciting. I really loved the rotation, I got to see so much, learn the down low on residency, and the neurosurgeons (most of them) are really awesome. In a different life maybe I would want to be one of them. But you know I just cannot give up my right to sit, and eat when I want to, and to live on so little sleep for the rest of my life, and I don’t want to get yelled at for 7 years like I’m some dumb teenager. My self esteem is low enough thank you very much. I don’t need more people yelling at me telling me I’m a “re-taaard.” (They use the word liberally, with different ways of saying it and everything, a couple of times they put some weird accent on it.) Neurosurgery seems like a path that would be awesome for the first few years, but I could imagine the novelty wearing off, especially when you’re 40 or 50. Plus these guys they spend almost no time with their patients, and a lot of the time they don’t even seem to have much interest in the actual personality or life of the patient apart from the problem. If they do…. more for good gossip than care. Slithers of compassion are pretty rare in this specialty, and you treat them like precious pearls. It’s really so odd to me, their mult-faceted personalities. One minute, yelling at someone making them feel really dumb, the next minute laughing with them and making jokes, one minute giving genuine blunt advice (very good advice), and then gossiping about patients. Most of them are really nice people who have very scary sides to them. It’s a little hard to explain. Did I mention that they have hardly ANY patient contact??? It’s so crazy!! It’s as if they’re not even working with people, just problems.
Procedures I have seen
Witnessed: Lumbar puncture, Nerve conduction study, EMG.
I totally understand why people refuse to see the doctor.
First On-Call
Got to hospital at 6 a.m., came back just now (10 pm). Before my on-call shift began, one of the residents told me “good luck!” and I didn’t quite understand why he said that at the time.
Hmm…. I understand. I understand now.
Wow I have really bad hearing problems.
Today our attending was talking about our patient with infantile spasms. The attending, Lord bless him, has a very soft voice, and he talks very fast. It takes an extreme amount of effort for me to keep up with him, and concentrate on what he’s saying.
He always has a lot of interesting stories about stuff back. Like today, he talked about back in the day, the drug of choice was ACTH. The guy who I guess created the synthetic version of it for use as a drug, wasn’t readily accepted into the American Chemical Society because of its hyperpigmentation. Odd thing was I was sitting towards the back of the room, and as I was straining my ear to hear him, and despite all my efforts, I somehow got the idea that the hyperpigmentation referred to the actual chemist, not the drug. So here I am in the back of the room thinking. 1. Wow there was a lot of racism back in the day huh? Never knew there were such inspiring black chemists back in the day. 2. Did my attending just refer to the black guy as hyperpigmented???
Needless to say, I was very amused and asked my peer if we had heard the same thing. She remembered nothing of the sort. Came home and told my roommate. Telling the story to her, made me realize how odd it was, and I decided to check the facts to see if the chemist really was black. Looked at his picture yeah definitely wasn’t black. Through much research, my roommate and I finally realized my great misunderstanding. And I was very thankful that I never really talk out loud that much during morning rounds.
Taking a study break
My dad came to visit, and since I needed some kind of smartphone/ipod touch for 3rd year, I asked my dad for an iphone. Omg. So addicting. I bought this one app I’ve kind of been dying to try out ever since I heard about it. It’s called the t-pain app, where it autotunes your voice. HAHAHAA. I haven’t had this much fun for awhile. Check out a little sample I tried out. I died laughing. Do I sound like t-pain?
Why am I craving pickles?
I ate one pickle 2 days ago with my meal, and it was the most delicious thing I ever tasted. Ever since that time, I’ve been craving pickles. Today I ate a whole jar of pickles after I went out for a run. Not a small jar mind you, it’s a 1QT jar…..
There’s no possible way I could be pregnant, but I thought it was weird I had this odd craving. Any suggestions on why I’m craving this? The nutritional value for pickles is Vitamin K…. and lots and lots of Sodium.
I can’t disagree with you there
I was doing my quiet time, and while I was reading the bible, I found something interesting….
“Of making many books there is no end,
And much study wearies the body.”
Ecclesiastes 12:12
I’m not really sure of the purpose of the verse though….
