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| aruba 2007what's up peoples,
got back from aruba on on 6/19. it was AWESOME. you can actually see some of the pics here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=29716&l=5f82e&id=733775441
yeup, i joined facebook. don't worry, xanga, ill still be on xanga. facebook is fun tho. hehe.
goin to vegas in next week. woohoo!! hope i dont lose a grip.
short and sweet update. peace ouT!
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| finished up clinic this afternoon, and am now officially on vacatioN!!!!!!
sweet. today also marks my last day as an intern. come july 1st, i'll officially be a 2nd year resident and will be having the new 'terns doing all the nitty gritty stuff that made this year absolutely horrible. small exaggeration i guess, but not by much. honestly, i have to say that without a doubt, this has been the worst year of my life. clarification: this has been the hardest i've ever worked/least i've ever slept/least amount of free time i've ever had in my whole life. but now... VACATION!!!
what's on the agenda? well, for starters, ill be traveling to sunny aruba this thursday for a nice 5 night stay and some well deserved R&R. then, ill be chillin back in ny/nj till the 27th, when i'll be heading to vegas till the 30th with some of my fellow interns. sweeeeet.
hopefully, ill post some pics of my adventures. till then, peace out.
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| night floatfor the past two weeks, i've been on "night float." for those who don't know, a lil explanation is in order. when a patient is admitted into the hospital, there's a team of doctors who take care of this patient. from the bottom to the top, the team usually consists of: 3rd year medical student, 4th year medical student sub-intern, 1st year resident/intern, 2nd/3rd year resident, and attending physician. they usually come in in the early morning, and depending on if they are "on call," leave anywhere between 5:30p and later. so who takes care of their patients when they go home for the day? that's what i've been doing for the past two weeks. night float. at this hospital, there are 4 teams, each with 2 interns and 1 subintern. each intern at this hospital carries anywhere between 4 and 10 patients during the day. what this means for me is that when i stroll in at 5:30p, usually a handful of interns are ready to "sign out" their patients to me. they tell me what's up with their patients, if there's anything that needs to be done overnight, anything to watch out for. basically, my job is to keep their patients alive and well until they come back in the morning by 7:30am. of course, there are also the cardiac arrest codes that happen intermittently through the night. sounds simple, no?
what sucks is that i'm the only intern here at night, pretty much taking care of between 60-80 patients every night. and some of these patients are sick. like on the brink of dying, sick. i've had to pronounce a few deaths during these past two weeks, sign a few death certificates, and i have to tell you, dying can suck sometimes. but sometimes, keeping your loved one alive can be worse. ill get into that some other time i guess.
well, i've pretty much come to hate the sound of my pager, going off about every few minutes to do something for someone somewhere in this hospital. but! today's my last night of night float. hooray!
and with that, i need to cut this entry short. just got paged.
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| strong workthere's a phrase that's tossed around alot in medicine. it's "strong work." when you do something well, or work hard, or fix something, basically anything that's done to meet expectations or go a lil beyond them, a senior member of your team may sometimes say "Strong work!" it's pretty much the equivalent of "good job" or "great" or "insert some kind of praise here" type of deal. as a med student, i was exposed to that phrase a lot, and at first, i was so happy when a resident or attending said that to me. i felt like i really was doing "strong work" and i was making a real impact on patient care blah blah blah. eventually, i heard that phrase so much throughout the years that it's pretty much lost all meaning to me.
the other night, one of the residents said that to me for something i helped him out with earlier that night. i couldnt help but smirk a lil bit, and wonder, does he really think i did 'strong work'? or is that just the knee-jerk response that ppl have, like saying bless you when someone sneezes. why do we still say bless you anyway? i believe that tradition stems from the superstition that a part of your soul leaves you when you sneeze, or some evil spirit is being released. something like that. it pretty much has no meaning, and is more just a form of courtesy we extend to acknowledge that the person you're standing next to has just forcefully expelled the contents of his mouth onto his hand/sleeve/air you're breathing and that we're aware of it so go wash your hands.
what's the point? mean what you say. or broaden your vocab so no one will suspect you dont.
i still wish i had some pics to show.
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