Showing posts with label medicine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label medicine. Show all posts

Saturday, January 16, 2010

Things That Happened This Week

It's been quite a week.

***Warning*** ***Rant ahead***

Had a slow leak in my tire since I went sliding on the ice and I went to get it fixed earlier this week. I really needed an oil change, new brakes, and maybe a new tire but decided just to just go to Wal-Mart and let them deal with the oil and tire. I was pleasantly surprised when the guy working there told me I had a nail in my tire and that he was able to patch it. No new tire. Money saved. Woohoo!

Then I got home from the hospital the next day, walked by my tire and saw that it was once again low and now missing the hubcap. Alas...

The water pipes in Jackson needed to undergo extensive repairs leaving several people without water. Fortunately I don't live there and had plenty of water - so much in fact, that I was able to wake up sitting in 3 inches of it on Thursday morning.

It's a long story, but it all starts with me losing my phone on Wednesday. Turns out it was at the VA. Hooray! Found! (See, I'm trying to be positive about all the crappy things that have happened!)

I usually use my phone as my alarm clock with my other huge, incredibly loud alarm clock as a backup. It's a delicate system that sometimes breaks down, but it's worked most every day this year to get me to the hospital on time (praise Jesus!). I really had a hard time getting to classes on time the last 2 years, but haven't has as much trouble getting to "work" on time this year. Anyway, back to the story. My phone alarm snoozes for 5 minutes and that's normally the perfect amount of time to run my bathwater. On a normal morning I get up, cut the water on, and get back in bed for 4.5 minutes of glorious sleep. On this morning, without my phone and without wanting to wake Kris up again with the loudest alarm clock in the world snoozing every 5 minutes I just went into the bathroom, cut the water on and took a seat on the floor. I laid my head in my hands on the edge of the tub and left one hand dangling in the tub so I'd feel the water and wake up. Well, you guessed it.

I woke up sitting in 3 inches of water. I also used up all the hot water. So I tried to be a kind, considerate wife and clean the floors and boil some hot water so at least Kris could take a hot bath. When I asked him if he wanted to take a bath he was so confused and then he got all mad and started yelling something about me "needing to get 8 hours of sleep." You can imagine where this went. I would LOVE to get 8 hours of sleep every night, but sometimes it's just not an option and you deal with it.

Anyway, long story short, it's been a rough week. While some people didn't have to go in to school this week because of the water outage we were rounding. We stayed until 6pm Friday and at one point I got pimped by the head of the department and I didn't even realize he was asking me a question. He said something about the side effects of phenytoin and then looked at me and started saying "1,2,3,4..." It was pretty funny because none of us knew that he was asking a question. He then asked my partner a more straight forward question about diabetes. What on earth?

Things could be worse, and I didn't mean to throw a pity party all over this post. At least I have a warm house to come home to unlike those poor people in Haiti. I'm really not even upset about the week. I just think it's weird when everything happens at once. At the end of the day I know all this work and humiliation in front of attendings will probably be worth it. Right? Right?

Thursday, January 7, 2010

Easy, Healthy Banana Bread

Hey y'all. Just made this banana bread recipe and it turned out pretty decent so I thought I'd share:

Ingredients

* 1/3 c. natural applesauce
* 3/4 c. brown sugar
* 3 egg whites
* 2-3 bananas
* 1/3 c. water
* 1 2/3 c. wheat flour (I used whole wheat pancake mix - cause I didn't want a huge bag of wheat flour that I wouldn't have time to use before it went rancid...)
* 1 tsp baking soda
* 1/4 tsp baking powder
*OPTIONAL - chocolate chips, walnuts, dried cranberries, etc... I added chocolate chips and it was pretty dang delicious. Other than that I don't think this bread has much fat/cholesterol in it at all.


Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Mix applesauce and sugar.
3. Stir in eggs then bananas then water.
4. Stir in dry ingredients.
5. Pour mixture into a loaf pan and bake ~35 minutes or until knife comes out clean.

This bread was a tasty end to a not so awesome day on Endocrine. I just don't really "jive" with the people who have chosen to do endocrine as their careers. It's not that I don't like them or respect them. We don't fight or disagree or anything. They're just kind of... different. They definitely don't have the same sense of humor as me and my partner. I'm not sure if I've ever seen one of them laugh - ever. They do stare a lot though. Here's a few reasons Endocrine is just not jiving with me:

1. We round at 2:30 in the afternoon, mostly because our attending is semi-retired.
2. They're big THINKERS; not so much DOERS. They're very nice, but I'm more of a doer for sure.
3. Today we met to round/have a case study with our attending at 2:30. He gave us the case, we all pondered it. At one point my partner and I were discussing what hormones were secreted from the anterior pituitary vs the posterior pituitary. It was all pertinent to the question he had just asked us. At that point he says, "Girls, pay attention now..." as if we're his 5 year old great-grand children or something. (He graduated from med school 50 yrs ago, literally. He told us so.) I really had to bite my tongue.
4. After berating us for discussing the pituitary gland, he then asked me a question and when I had to think about it for a second he said, "Come on Ashley, give us an answer." Is my name Ashley? No. thankyouverymuch.
5. About 30 minutes into our case study some nice gentleman came into our room and stated that all the students were to be dismissed because of the bad weather and that only the department heads had gotten the e-mail. Our attending stated that he saw that, but didn't think it mattered. He then proceeded to keep us for the next 45 minutes before letting us go to "do whatever it is we do all day." Yeah, he said it.

Can you tell someone's made my sh*tlist???

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Lucky?

Anybody who knows me and my medicine partner, A, knows that we like to gripe. It's mostly out of habit and we're never 100% serious. I feel like on most other rotations we've had it a little harder than some others or either we feel compelled to do more and not be lazy (I'm not talking about anyone who reads this blog, obvs; those girls WORK). So we do our stuff, but we gripe about it the whole time - and afterwards :)

Why am I saying all this? Because I feel like we've gotten pretty lucky on Medicine so far and I just wanted to put it out there. Don't want to ALWAYS be a griper for no reason at all. Here's where we've lucked out that I want to acknowledge:

1. We've only had to take 2 nights of call (since our very 1st day on medicine was our team's post call day), even though we did work our little tails off during them. Other classmates have had 3 or 4 and some of them will be post-call during our midterm on Friday [sorry Ewok :(]

2. Our residents and attending are very nice, maybe a little organizationally challenged at times, but very very nice. I'll take a good attitude over OCD organizational skills any day of the week.

3. We both only see 2 pts daily and that's all our residents/attendings want.

4. We've gotten 30 minutes to 1 hr for lunch every day. Have never gotten a chance to eat dinner while on call, but this is supposed to be a positive post so pretend you didn't hear that.

I'm sure I'm forgetting something, but oh well. I should be studying anyway. Hope everyone's had a good week so far. 3 more days of waking up early for those of us on Medicine!!!

Monday, December 7, 2009

Ice Ice Baby

Remember how it snowed this weekend? I don't think I'll ever forget it - not because of how pretty it was though. There was lots of ice all over I-55. Fast forward to 5:30 am on Saturday morning and guess who had a run in with the ice on the way to the hospital? You guessed it - yours truly. Here's what happened:

Driving along, not too fast, when I notice 2 sets of blue lights in the left 2 lanes of the highway. What does everyone do when they see blue lights? They SLAM on their brakes. I did not, because I knew there was ice on the road. The people in front of me decided it was a great idea though. So in order not to hit them, I had to slam on my brakes too. Then my brakes completely locked up and my car slid a little to the left - directly towards the cop car. I thought I was going to take it out. Then my instincts made me jerk the wheel to the right, so I went veering across 3 lanes of traffic towards the right. Then I jerked left again. Then right. The last time I veered right I must have really done it good because my car decided to do no less than 3 complete 360 degree circles across 3 lanes of traffic. I was screaming at the top of my lungs. It was NOT FUN.

Then, miraculously, my car stopped. I ended up with my rear left tire slammed against the concrete side wall and facing oncoming traffic. From the sound of it, I thought my whole back end was totaled. I actually braced myself right before I hit the wall and thought I'd be headed to the hospital in an ambulance. Then I realized the police men 3 lanes over from me WEREN'T coming to help me. What was the deal??? I clearly just had a massive wreck!!! So after calling my friend and partner for Internal Medicine, A, and letting her know what had gone down I went outside to survey the damage.

It was insane. The only thing that was messed up was my hubcab. It was wedged in between my tire and the concrete wall. No scratches - no dents. Craziness. So what did I do? I threw that hubcab in the back seat and made it to the hospital only 15 minutes later than I intended to get there. I was pretty shaken up and I'm still convinced that the police actually CAUSED more wrecks than they prevented that morning. But overall I'm thankful. It was very scary, but at least I made it. I guess God wanted me to live that day!

Since med school started this car has not been the luckiest for me. I've gotten 2 speeding tickets (M1 year), sideswiped by a lady and her son during our 1st test week of M2 year, and now sent on the icecapades M3 year. I think I better get rid of the thing before next year. Not sure if I can survive the next one!

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Catch Up Post

Runner's Log: ran/walked ~15 miles in the last week in 2.5 hours. No clue of calories.

Now for the revelation:

I DON'T hate Medicine so far. What's wrong with me? Everything I've ever said or thought goes against this. Maybe it's because our team is really nice. We just have an intern, upper level resident, and then the attending. I was expecting really "anal" people but they're nice. They give us actual responsibilities which I enjoy because I don't feel my day has been wasted and it makes the time go by faster. Then, after we do our work - they are APPRECIATIVE. It's the first time this has happened this year I think. At least I know it's the first time residents have ever vocalized gratitude so often.

What I like about medicine:
1. It's organized. Patient presents with problem. You acknowledge problem, determine BEST treatment plan based on evidence, and then treat them. They get better (usually).
2. Our residents and attendings have been nice so far.

What I don't like:
1. Early hours - alarm goes off at 4:30 most days and I still haven't gotten in the habit of going to bed before 10:00.
2. I hated rounding multiple times a day at first, but since then we've mostly just run the list a once or twice daily and then had attending rounds once daily. It's not bad if your team is efficient and it keeps everyone up to date.
3. Lack of procedures. I like working with my hands.
4. Lack of time off. We are supposed to get 1 day a week off "on average" which means you can potentially work 26 days in a row, then have 4 off at once. Shoot me.

Another exciting tidbit - on our very first day of rounds at 6:30 we were walking by a room just as the nurse happened to shout "CODE!!!" Turns out our team was the code team that month. It was a little chaotic, but long story short both me and my partner got to do chest compressions multiple times and our patient survived. Pretty exciting stuff.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Things I'm Loving Right Now

1. Berry Berry Good - it's my latest obsession. I've spent $8 on frozen yogurt there in the last week. Today I tried the peanut butter, mint, strawberry & cheesecake (swirled), and plain tart with some strawberries and pineapple on top. (All the flavors were separated by a little bit of room in my cup - I'm not a complete neanderthal) They give you a cup, you run around filling it up, then they charge by the ounce. I want to say it's actual frozen yogurt and not sugary/ice cream stuff but I'm not 100% on that.

2. The fact that psych is almost over. Today my attending (who is triple boarded) asked me why a diabetic patient of his shouldn't have concentrated sweets. Really dude? Really? I was so in shock that I couldn't even blurt out an answer and then he said - "Yeah, I don't know either..." Whoa - talk about making your profession look bad.

3. All the fun flavors at Cups right now. I got the butterscotch blitzen au lait a day or 2 ago and it was fan-freaking-tastic.

4. My schedule/partners/group for Medicine. We start Internal Medicine next week and I couldn't be more excited about my schedule and being (hopefully?) super productive all day. I'm sick of being useless on psych. I'm not loving the q5 call that goes along with medicine :(

5. Recycling old electronics - sounds weird I know. I've just been in a super organizational mood for the last few weeks and it feels good to get rid of some junk. So far I've dropped off 2 huge old computer monitors (from my Mom's house), a printer, and Kris's old laptop at Best Buy. At one store they charged me $10 per item but then gave me a $10 Best Buy gift card in return for each item. At the 2nd Best Buy I went to on a different day they just took the stuff.

6. The fact that my kitchen cabinets are now officially organized. If you've been to my house it's no secret how tiny my kitchen it. I have 2 cabinets for ALL of our food, not including the one above the stove where I keep spices. Up until 2 days ago I just had everything shoved in there all haphazardly and 50% of the time when you opened cabinets something fell out or you couldn't get it shut again. No more my friends. Pictures are to follow because I know you're all just dying to see inside my kitchen cabinets - ha ha.

7. Finally having just the right amount of comfy shoes for trekking around the hospital all day. Here's what I needed to make it work and not feel limited in style options:

a pair of Dansko-ish type clogs to wear with scrubs
2 pairs of boots - 1 black, 1 brown
2 pairs heels - 1 black, 1 brown
flats - lots of 'em. I guess you only need 2 pairs, but I've got quite a few more than that.

Anyway, off to our Psych exit interview. Not real sure what it will entail, but hopefully it won't take too long!