search terms that apparently bring up my page:

- wabi sabi gym
- artwork on the cay by theodore taylor
- baby with prominent eyes, prominent occiput low set ears
- neurofibromatosis and vacuum extraction
- gargantuan nipples
- slide of hemosiderin in lungs
- guppie histology
- dark enema clinic

while waiting for an interpreter this morning, i decided to bite the bullet and tested my broken spanish (a la my new book) on my spanish-only speaking patient. it probably took 5x the amount of time that it would have taken in english, but i got some answers out of her. woo! thank god for the interpreter, though. at that rate, i would have kept the patient all day.

in other news, it was the day of the diabetic pregnant woman. insulin for everyone! i’m just waiting for the throngs of macrosomic (chunky monkey) babies.

the free food of the day was from the makers of premarin/prempro. yay for estrogen! we got a nice breakfast spread, plus the usual pens, notepads, and a funky light for my stethescope.

and… i’m officially addicted to coffee. i skipped it this morning, and nearly fell asleep on my 430am commute to the hospital, napped before rounds, and zoned my way thru rounds until breakfast– when i promptly downed a cup ‘o joe. oh well. i guess my abstinence couldn’t last forever.

my entire 430am drive to the hospital was lit up by lightning flashes and punctuated by overly loud thunder clapping. if that wasn’t enough, there was a torrential downpour and many many crazy drivers. i hate the 909. at one point, a giant truck sped by and covered my windshield with water so thick i couldn’t see for a good 30 seconds– i hit the brakes and prayed i wouldn’t hit anything.

and now, for the list of things i’d write about if i wasn’t so lazy/tired:

- pregnant woman with a C5 pedical fracture
- post spinal anesthesia headache
- woman without uterus, but with a rectocele and cystocele, whose vaginal walls kept collapsing into my speculum during the exam
- a “pessary”
- polyhydraminos diagnosed via AFI
- lunchtime seminar on copper IUDs in which i got to practice placing one, and got to take one home as a lovely parting gift.
- morbidly obese spanish-speaking pap smear.
- angry, godfather-like doctor who beligerently pimped the residents

it’s wierd how a 27 hour shift makes a 12 hour shift seem like a light day. well, that, and a catered lunch complete with cookies and copper IUD insertion demonstrations. woo.

the kids and i were talking about tennis in the morning before pre-op conference… which reminded me that i have my tennis racquet in my car… and prompted me to head over to the club after dinner and smack a few balls around. my hand hurts now… but i have new glistening white tennis shoes. that makes it all better.

… you think you’re fine, and then BOOM! there’s something way out there.

i started on surgery today: total abdominal hysterectomy with bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy. the doc let me slide my hand all around her insides to feel the liver, kidneys, gallbladder (complete with gallstones), and other fun stuff. it was a 2.5 hour procedure– i stood on a stool and retracted, snipped pieces of sutre, and stapled the skin up. woo!

too bad that was our only patient for the day.

the rest of the time was spent in clinic seeing masses of women with ob and gyn issues (among their other issues). pts included:

- hydrocephalus girl(2 shunts!)/short gut syndrome with new onset severe body odor

- dementia patient who nearly kicked me in the face when i tried to do a pap (even though she was being held down by two women. the sedation wore off too soon!)

- gunshot wound victim with itchiness/smelliness. she lifts up her shirt nonchalantly and, lo and behold, there’s a giant scar on her abdomen plus an extra hole off to the side where her intestines are sticking out.

- two non-english speaking patients, one of which i attempted to speak with. dolor? a qui? poquito. ahhhhhhhhh. i am accomplished! time to get that medical spanish book.

the doctors are lighthearted and hi-fricken-larious. we’ve got one going off on the “lost art” of women serving men. he reminds me of the new song “cater to you”. another laughs loudly all the time and jokes about mormon people (there are at least 2 mormon students). one doc turns red when he laughs/talks/sits. and the last one, well, i made his eyes water and totally grossed him out when describing a patient’s newly-aquired, quite pungent body odor. they make clinic more fun– it’s like doing work with your drunken grandfather(s).

so… i ended up doing 2 paps (attempting 3), 3 breast exams, played with the doppler on nice pregnant womans bellies, 5 mini-physicals, and had lunch with the boys at some shady chinese buffet.

oh, the joys of ob/gyn.

call hurts. seriously. i got almost 2 hours of sleep last night. but… let’s start from the beginning…

my day started at 4am, when i showered and helped annie drag the fish tank to her car. i ended up getting to the hospital at 530, but the entrance i was in front of was closed… so i had to run around to the other side of the building. then… i got lost and couldn’t find where i was supposed to meet. bah! i finally got there, and they sent me downstairs to do a note on a patient. unfortunately, they gave me the wrong name, so i couldn’t find the dammed person. so… up i go again to get the right name… by the time i finished my note, rounds had already started. argh.

i spent the day doing “A sheets” amundo and watching deliveries. i scrubbed in on 2 c-sections– one of which was twins + a tubal ligation where i got to staple up the belly. woo!

i [heart] my cutie resident! he’s sooooooooooo nice. the nurses, on the other hand, are a little less than happy– and the secretary is just plain angry (which i understand, being a secretary once myself, but she’d best not keep kicking me around). effing postpartum nurses call me HOURS after a patient has been transferred over there– YELLING at me because there was no “A sheet”. i told them i sent one over with the patient. they just yelled some more and told me to do another one. so… i go over there, and i ask for the old chart… which they couldn’t find… so i had to go looking… lo and behold… it was on the table in the chart room soaking up some kind of fluid… WITH THE A SHEET ON TOP. i miss the NICU nurses. ::grumble:: ::grumble::

near the end of the day, i got to deliver a placenta. lunch was provided by some wound care company– olive garden. mmm.

the quote of the day: “pounds are the same as inches, right?” - some security guard

the night doc was pretty efficient– we worked like mad and got patients in and out until the waiting room was empty. and…he helped me deliver my first baby! yay! big, slimey, screaming baby!

and… i have learned… that a nutrigrain bar and a bag of crackers is not enough to get you through a night without sleep. next time, i’ll need hard core junk food… so i don’t fall asleep on my charts.

it’s the 1st day of ob/gyn, and i’m tired. i swear, babies pop out every few minutes down on L&D — it’s quite exciting. it’s also quite bloody, and quite loud. one lady screamed so loudly that you could hear her down the halls.

i noticed that they didn’t do episiotomies on any of the women today– quite unlike the last place i was at, where i’ve not seen a delivery without one. and… the kids over here are HUGE compared to the ones i’m used to working with.

i spoke to one nice lady, who followed each question that i asked with: “you mean on the streets? or in-carceration?”

i scrubbed into a c-section for a intrauterine fetal demise patient. poor woman took the thing to term and suddenly … it just stopped moving. argh.

and lastly… yay for my last nicu rotation! apparently, “clinic” is chock full of maternal diabetes and we were asked to read up on it… good thing my last ppt presentation was on diabetes in pregnancy! woooo! and… i had a PIH patient today– and survived the pimping because another of my nicu ppt presentations was on PIH! wooooooo!

i’m on call tomorrow. no woo.

- i did my very first circumcision! yay!
- he gave me an A!
- he also fell asleep during my presentation.
- a nice nurse gave me a present!
- twins, triplets, and twins again
- “who cares if one kidney fails, we have two, right?”
- and a few other things that i can’t remember.