Intern quote of the week:

"I'm like Lassie. You can tell me what the problem is and I'll run and get help."
Dr. Sarah G 10:56 AM

Just in case you were in the market for some of the Unabomber's things, there's going to be an online auction of his personal belongings. Check it out. Come on, don't you want the guy's clothes and books and stuff? They're drawing the line at anything he might have written that would actually tell you how to make a bomb. This is especially good because only serious freaks would want that guy's stuff, and I would think they would be the most likely freaks to want to emulate him.

Speaking of blowing things up, I was on call all weekend. That means Friday, Saturday and Sunday, folks. It wasn't bad at all because it was home call. In fact, I would have been downright relaxed if I hadn't been coming down with strep throat. I had a fever of 102. Do you know that if you had that kind of fever while in the hospital, we would culture the hell out of you? Anyway, I had some difficult patients and got paged a lot by a hospital that we don't cover (at 2 and 4 AM). I learned a few important things while on call.

1.) There are some phone numbers in the hospital that cannot be reached from outside of the hospital, so don't page your senior resident to one.
2.) Family members can make a patient consistently tachycardic, and if you evict the family from the room, your patient will normalize.
3.) ALWAYS complete all possible paperwork ahead of time. If the plan is to keep someone another day, but they're being disruptive enough to get security called, just fill out the freaking discharge form ahead of time. Get your prescriptions on the chart. Then you only have to say to the nurse, "he can go" over the phone.
Otherwise, your ass is coming in to discharge him.
4.) When you don't cover a hospital, be nice to the person paging you the first time, but be very stern the second time they call you. This will save you from the 4 am page that will just put you over the edge.
5.) Be grateful when you have a kind senior resident and an attending on call who actually thanks you for seeing a consult. It's totally your job to do it, but it's nice to be appreciated all the same. 8:09 AM

Two hot chicks who don't have time to go out anymore. Residency sucks. 9:40 PM

When I wasn't paying attention...

Everybody got married. Well, maybe that's not true. Everybody who is wonderful, and attractive, and sweet, and smart.... all of them got married. They also managed to marry wonderful, attractive, sweet, and smart women, so I can't even get fired up about how their wives don't deserve them. What on Earth was I doing when all of this was happening? I seem to remember going to school a lot, and spending a lot of time with my ex-boyfriend. Hm. It's not like I have a lot of time to meet any other wonderful, attractive, sweet and smart men. I'm working a billion hours per week, and spending my off hours doing crazy things like checking my patients' labs online from home. I have been on some of the most bizarre dates ever over the last few months. This is what is left to me, freaks and weirdos. Maybe I'm one of them. I would like to think I fall into the wonderful category, but you never can tell. Just because my mom tells me I am doesn't mean it's true. :) I mean, what man wouldn't want a woman who is bossy, likes to win, is freakishly neat, works a whole lot, and spends her time trying to get a chance to cut people open? I would think this would be a huge turn-on. I don't even know why I'm worrying about this right now, anyway. I barely have time to do my laundry. Relationships are a lot of work, and I can't imagine it would be fun to be with someone and never see them. Maybe I just want somebody to do my laundry for me.

I have been on Urology for three days, and it pretty much rocks all the time. I don't feel rushed or pressured. I can take my time to figure out what is up with my patients. The Urology service also runs our kidney transplant program, so I may get to at least observe a few transplants. This is nice because I have an interest in transplant. It's good to know early if it's something you're interested in doing. There's another general surgery resident who is actually on transplant right now, but I don't think he would mind if I just looked on. I don't need to sew blood vessels or the ureter right now. I'm still trying to handle skin, fascia, and the occasional bowel anastamosis (if I'm really lucky), so it's cool.

I guess that's all for now. The summary is: I like surgery and I'm kinda lonely. Isn't that what every resident says?

10:49 AM