Weblog » Archives » September 2006

  • An update on roaches

    It occurred to me that I haven't really broached the subject of my hairy, spiky little friends recently.In sum, I think the poisonous traps I've been laying around the apartment are working, because I only now occasional…

  • The great outdoors

    The great thing about doing residency in California is that you're almost always guaranteed a pleasant, sunny day off (whenever you manage to get a day off). I feel gluttonous and wasteful when I come home post-call on a…

  • Somebody call a doctor

    Imposter syndrome is perhaps most acutely recognized in the first-year medical student who is forced to wear his short white coat and make an obligatory appearance in the hospital before the unwitting elderly patient lyi…

  • The diabetic foot

    "Vascular is a wound care service," my chief resident told me on the first day of my rotation.This is true of most vascular surgery services, I think. Vascular surgeons are interested in the delivery of oxygenated red bl…

  • Beat

    As we were sitting around the cafeteria table in a dim mood, my chief -- a soft-spoken serious woman planning to subspecialize in surgical oncology -- said darkly, "I'm trying think of what I look forward to on this serv…

  • No, it's not about varicose veins

    As one of my fellow interns said, "What sort of messed up lives do we live that we get so excited about two days off in a row? We start making elaborate plans for all sorts of getaways!"It's true. This is my first "golde…

  • Unless, of course, they come up with Step 4...

    Done! No more little orange tickets in the mail and futile, frantic calls to some haphazard telecommunications center in Baltimore saying over and over again, "No, I can only take the test on this day!"USMLE Step 3 is ov…

  • From the brain of Einstein

    My med school roommate presented me this story from his dastardly daring intern work on the front lines of the emergency room in the ghetto of north Philadelphia. (There is, I suppose, enough identifying information in t…

  • I wave, you wave, we all wave...

    Moment of admitted medical nerdiness:A woman was in the PACU (post-anesthesia care unit, i.e., the recovery room after surgery) when her labs came back as abnormal. Her potassium was 2.2.Hmm. That's one of the lowest val…

  • Cross-cover

    In the pilot episode of Scrubs, JD is next to a CT scanner when Turk comes up and says that he's "cross-covering" for a friend. In the commentary, Donald Faison mentions that he said that without having any idea what it …

  • Apologies

    You know when you open your mouth and nothing good comes out of it? That happened to me yesterday. It was the end of a relatively short day in the hospital. And (the circumstances being unimportant) I said something to d…

  • Troix

    I had to turn down a friend's offer to go on a long day-hike in the Sierras this Saturday. It's not that I don't like day-hikes. I do. It's about the only outdoorsy thing that I really like and can do (having never reall…

  • Under where?

    Sometimes I have to step back and think to myself: how on Earth did I ever get desensitized to such things?I just got called to see someone's butt. More specifically, his butt crack. He had a split-thickness skin graft t…

  • It's true...they don't teach you this in med school

    Nobody trained me to break bad news. It's not something tested on the boards; it's not something anyone can prepare you for. But then, one day, it's suddenly my turn.One day, two patients: a woman and her son; a man and …

  • Stalkernet

    I've been in the hospital for 32 straight hours. I really should be going home, but instead I'm in my call room, surfing the Web.Why? Well, it's partially because I don't have Internet access at home, and so this is the …

  • DVD madness

    The third season of Arrested Development and the second season of House are out on DVD, and thanks to my substitute-for-a-girlfriend relationship with Neflix and a quirk of Amazon's Web site, I have both seasons in my ap…

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