4th Year: July August September
3rd year: Family Pediatrics Medicine( 1) Med(2)
Med(3)
Surgery(1)
Surg(2) Surg(3) Psychiatry Ob/Gyn
Index
FAQs
Other Interesting People: GabeL
Jenny
Kissaknee Lucas Yolanda
July 27, 2004
No
Disappointment:
LAC/USC lives up to its reputation… plenty of drunkards, dirtbags, and crackheads…
it’s a pretty crazy place.
Actually, pretty bad place to
be… I’d never want to be a patient here. The docs are great… it’s the
environment and system that’s a bit frightening… the triage area is
a morbid, packed car-rally of beds and gurneys that doesn’t move at
all… to give you another indication, my first thought when I saw the ED
for the first time was, ‘huh, this looks like that hospital in Ayacucho’ (where I went for medical missions in
remote Peru).
The program itself is pretty impressive.
The residents are really sharp.
They work like dogs, but they really know their stuff. The attendings are
pretty impressive so far, too.
I’ve seen ER docs do stuff here that is absolutely ridiculous
– I saw a senior resident (under the supervision of an attending) float a
transvenous pacer in the ED!!!!! Holy s***!
That’s the stuff of cardiology fellowships!!!!
I’ve done three shifts in 1350 (the high acuity section) so
far. It’s getting good as
I’m learning the system and the residents are getting more comfortable
with me. I finally was managing (if I
was fast enough) my own patients yesterday.
I also have done more procedures in these three shifts (FAST ultrasound
exams, femoral line, LP, ABGs) than my entire third
year…
My Saturday night shift was impressive.
I got the femoral line on a trauma patient… granted I didn’t
do a whole lot, but the adrenaline was something else… geez… with all the people around the bed… the
flurry of activity and noise… the resuscitation… and an eventual
open thoracotomy… geez…
after I got the stick – pretty nerve-wracking since the guy didn’t
have a pulse, so I was basically doing the stick blind – and was reaching
for the inducer/cordis, I remember pausing to look at
my hand, and it was shaking like crazy… whew….
I’m starting to hit a point of introspection, where I’m
getting past the initial awe of this ED, and really starting to observe
things… that Saturday night was a bit tough… just patient after
patient would roll in… one dead… one alive… one
crashing… one resuscitated… just people literally dying everywhere around me… kind
of crazy… I think it’ll take a while to really sink in…
Lastly, had a neat pep talk by one of the
faculty here. He was
supposed to lecture on respiratory disease, but ended up talking about tort
reform/medical malpractice crisis… but eventually got onto the subject of
kind of this idealism of the profession of medicine. I know most people don’t really buy
that anymore, that it’s floofy and even
naïve… but, being surrounded by so many unhappy and disgruntled docs,
it’s really refreshing to listen to somebody who still loves what they do
and really buys into some sort of altruism… it seems so rare… I
think I really want to go to a program where there’s
a handful of people who still believe that stuff… I mean, I entered med school with this great
vision and calling that’s since been diminished by the drudgery of med
school and the peers and role-models around me… I miss it. I miss being able to talk about enjoying
taking care of the indigent and really meaning it… I miss being convicted about the privilege
and responsibility of being a physician…
It seems so foreign now… aie…
One of
the Greatest Ever…:
Anyone notice that Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France for the record,
sixth straight year?
July 20, 2004
USC/LAC:
Struggled through orientation crap for the last two days… walking
back and forth across the campus signing forms to hand in to other offices to
sign other forms in order to go to other offices to pick up more forms…
I surprisingly stayed awake (minus 15 minutes) for all 6+ hours of grand
rounds and med student lectures today.
It was pretty rough, but it’s at least interesting at this
point… apparently, if today was any indication, lectures aren’t the
same bland yadda yadda yadda of my textbooks simply repeated, but it’s
actually useful stuff. Go figure.
My rotation is actually really light.
I’ve only got about 10 shifts for the whole month (+ lectures and
workshops and presentations) which works out to... uh… 1 shift every 3 days? I
was expecting to get killed on this rotation… only to find out that not
being scheduled for any night shifts
wasn’t a mistake, but instead, quite purposeful -- they try not to give
visiting students night shifts since they probably have friends/family to visit
while they’re in town. Good lord,
are they for real? Well, I’m not
complaining…
Meanwhile, the visiting student subletting the other room at this house
is on the most difficult ob/gyn rotation
possible… ie even the residents consider it the
most hellish month(s) of their 4 years of residency. I think she’s working double the hours
I am…. Heh. I think she’s
going to kill me one day out of irritation.
My first shift is tomorrow.
Sonic
Youth:
Went to their gig last night at the Henry
Fonda Theatre in
The crowd was something of an indie-alternative
with a hint of grunge… actually a bit younger than I expected considering
how long Sonic Youth’s been around…
Pretty neat venue. Just an open floor on the bottom level, seats
on the balcony, and the roof had a patio with couches, a bar, and projected the
stage onto a wall. The patio was a great
place just to have a drink, enjoy the cool evening, and hang out…
The opening act (Wolf Pack?) was really bizarre though. I stayed for about 10… seconds…
before my concert buddy and I just headed back to the patio.
So, pretty satisfying concert.
Good gig. Good venue. Plenty of entertainment. Good company.
July 15, 2004
Tofu Ninja has been sighted throughout Los Angeles County
Tofu Ninja has been seen around town befriending the public.He is reportedly 6 feet tall and 3 feet wide, good for the heart, high in protein and low in cholesterol. He was last seen on Fox Sports Net's Southern California Sports Report, Wednesday, July 14th. According to sources closest to the Tofu Ninja, he will be appearing at Hollywood & Highland Friday morning (7/23) and throughout Downtown LA next week (7/19-7/23). Tofu Ninja is scheduled to greet visitors of the 2004 LA Tofu FestivalSaturday, July 24, 2004 12-8pmSunday, July 25, 2004 12-6pm2nd and S San Pedro St Tokyo Don't miss out on the opportunity to see Tofu Ninja in action! For more information, visit www.tofufestival.com
July 13, 2004
Med Student Benefits:
I was
washing dishes while waiting for my rice to finish cooking… felt a sharp
pain in my hand… said, “Ah!…
f***!”… saw the bleeding… a broken
glass… looked under the flap of skin… and thought,
“Hmmm… that looks like muscle…”
Really
tempted to just try to stop the bleeding at home and eat my dinner (grilled
some chicken marinated with lemon juice, olive oil, garlic, and some
seasoning… and topped with some feta… mmmm…
tasty)… but, it was bleeding pretty good… and was a decent
cut… after several minutes of not getting the bleeding to stop, I decided
I’d just head over to the ER and get a med student to sew me up…
figured whatever med students were there didn’t really have anything
better to do and it’d be best for my cut.
So, I just walked through the ambulance entrance, saw a student and doc
I knew, they put me in an unused observation room and I got stitched up. Ah… one of the only perks of being a
med student – getting to walk into an ER and get treated for free.
Overheard Ortho Conversations:
1)
Resident 1:
“What’s going on with the fourth floor? How come we have all these kids yelling,
moaning, and crying?”
R2: “It’s turned into a f***in’ Peds
hospital…”
R3: “Just give them some stuffed
animals...”
R4: “You gotta
chuck them in the room like grenades…”
R4: “You gotta
go, ’Here’s a glowstick… Now shut the f*** up!’”
2)
Doctor:
(confronting a patient) “Nobody lies to Dr. yyy. Now, you
aren’t lying are you?”
Patient: “No.”
D: “Do you know who Dr. yyy is?”
P: “No.”
D: “I’m
Dr. yyy.”
3)
Resident 1:
“Mrs. xxx definitely isn’t a
crack-whore. I asked her
yesterday.”
4)
Resident 1:
“Well, we could send [resident 2] to do it.”
Doctor
1: “No, I want to keep him around
in case I want to fire his a**.”
July 10, 2004
Stupid Comment of the Week:
Anesthesiologist: “Do you know how to turn off the screen
saver?”
Student: “No, sorry”
A: “… because my daughter can do all
that stuff with the computer…”
S: “No, it’s my sister you want to
ask. It’s not my generation,
I was born a little late.”
Um…
excuse me? You’re in your
mid-twenties and computers aren’t
your generation? What are we -- the
generation of the slide ruler? I swear… some of my peers are the most
tech-backward people I’ve ever met.
What an idiot. Who attributes
ignorance to age when they’re twenty-five???? Twenty-five!!! I must be a friggin’
genius for using CD players and cordless phones (don’t even mention cell
phones), ‘cause, well, it’s “not our generation”…
July 9, 2004
This is the Life:
Fourth
Year is friggin’ awesome!!!! No compulsion to study. No stupid tests. Don’t have to bust my
a** meaninglessly.
For
example, today, went to one surgery in the morning, got to suture a
little… actually, would have got to close the entire wound if I were a
bit faster, the sutures were a bit neater, and hands weren’t shaking from
hunger + coffee… Then, just
chatted with some 3rd years + an anesthesia resident I know…
Then went to clinic around 100pm. Saw a
handful of patients… realized that I was slowing down an already late
afternoon for the doc, so just took off around 330pm. NICE.
The residents have actually told us straight away that, as 4th
years, there’s no reason,
unless we want to go into Ortho, that we should be there past 500pm. I actually am going to kind of take call
tomorrow... going to take my pager with me to the library and study… and
have the resident call me for ortho consults in the
ER until I’m bored and want to go home.
=) This is great.
Ortho is
really fun too. The residents are
hilarious. I haven’t laughed this
much since… I think vascular surgery back in Jan…
Although,
I do feel a bit bad… well, not really… I think it’s
hilarious… there’s one student who needs a recommendation from the
Ortho chair… he’s been with the guy on surgery everyday this week. The earliest he’s gotten out of the
hospital has been 1000pm. Today,
he’s gonna be there probably until
MIDNIGHT. Brutal. Meanwhile, another 4th year (going into PM&R) and I are
leaving the hospital at 330pm… ha ha...
Insensitive
you say? Well, joke’s on me once I
hit the pacific time zone in a week when I’m
trying to impress on my ER rotations.
But, once
I get back, my sub-internship in internal medicine in October is going to be a
joke too. I’m going to be
legitimately out of town the last two weekends and may have to take additional
days off to take shifts in the ER. NICE.
New Third Years:
The new
third years started on surgery today.
Kind of hard remembering how lost and overwhelmed I was with everything
during my first inpatient rotation… but the guys on Ortho have it pretty
easy… so I think it’ll be pretty benign for these guys. The girl who I worked with today had a pretty
decent first day – scrubbed into two surgeries without a problem and got
to drill, then headed off to a skills workshop for the afternoon. Also, the ortho
chair is taking vacation for the next two weeks, so things are going to really
slow down…
Scut Work:
Which brings me to scut work. Lots of med students complain about scut, but after hearing from my friend at the Cleveland
Clinic who, as an intern, has to do her own blood draws and sometimes has to
run the samples down to the lab herself, which is absolutely ridiculous…
I think med students can be pretty useful in taking care of some of the garbage
that needs to be done. Granted,
that’s not everything med students should be doing, but at the same time,
I think residents have more important things to do that running back and forth
between the lab.
For pete’s
sake, how ridiculous would it be for an intern to be called to run a code with
a blood vial or urine sample in their hand walking to the lab? When residents take the time out to teach me
stuff and allow me to slow down their already hectic day, it’s really no
big deal for me to take 5 minutes to do a pre-op H&P, or check on some
labs, or do a dictation while I’d otherwise be standing around,
daydreaming…
July 7, 2004
Falling on my A**:
“Pull
harder,” said the doc. I was
pulling on the patient’s leg to open up the knee joint. The doc had just placed the artificial knee joint
and was cleaning up the extra cement and random tissue. I already had been in surgery for 6
hours… the other a hip… a lot
of physical work… so I was pretty tired.
Trying to use my body weight to compensate, I had been leaning a
bit… “Pull harder”… I leaned further… and with a
little slip… I landed flat on my a**…
Nice. Well, took me long enough to totally
embarrass myself… I’d
actually expected to pass out during the preceding hip surgery… we wore
these fully enclosed face masks… and my a/c-fan didn’t work for the
first hour or so… geez it was hot… but
nope, just some stupid little slip and I landed on my a** and self-eliminated
myself from the knee surgery…
ACEP 2004 Research Forum:
Check it out. I’m #79.
July 5, 2004
<yawn>:
Well,
I’ve had more drab birthdays… 27 is kind of an uninteresting
age… although it is 3 x 9,
making it bit better than 26… 25
was the last cool one. You’re
still young, but since you’re halfway through your 3rd decade,
you can claim some symbolic maturity. I
think my lamest one was working at the Century 22 theater
on my birthday in high school.
Talking to
a friend, she suggested celebrating not
being 30. I suggested celebrating not being a teenager. Although I was pretty smug with myself in
high school, nowadays I kind of like having some insight… plus, in retrospect, although I had a
lot of fun, I also had some bizarre, crazy emotional messes… maybe there is a hidden truth in the
melodrama of teen flicks… or maybe
I’m just trying to justify liking Smallville
for reasons other than Kirsten Kreuk.
In all,
this one wasn’t too bad: 1)
didn’t have to work (which will likely change next year), 2) got to be
lazy, sleep in, watch movies, play PS2, 3) got some nice phone calls and
e-cards, and 4) apparently, I have a few presents waiting for me in CA.
Trois Couleurs:
Finally watched this French trilogy. I liked it.
You kind of have to be in the mood for weird French movies. It was visually provocative… very
attractive movies to watch. The
symbolism is well-developed, but reasonably accessible. You get a head start with the colors of the
French flag anyways (
Stop me from Vomiting:
I swear
that my brother and new sis-in-law are on the verge of cuddling everytime I’m on the phone with them. It’s nice to know they really dig each
other… and, I suppose, kind of cute?… but,
uh, I don’t need to hear
it…
Back to Work:
Tomorrow
morning, I’m back to work. Got two weeks of Orthopaedic Surgery, and
then LA/USC for 4 weeks, then Highland/Alameda County for 4 weeks. I did a darn good job with a total brain
flush this past week. I got some
important work done on my personal statement, CV, and research, but
didn’t study a lick of ER or Orthopaedics… hopefully I can motivate myself to study for
a half-hour today… feel like I
need to put in as much PS2 time as possible since chances like this come around
once every 6 months…
July 2, 2004
Ego-Boost:
My meeting
with Dr. Brickman went well yesterday morning. He was a lot of help as far as developing a
game-plan for my upcoming rotations in CA.
I asked, but he didn’t say much as far as my competitiveness as an
applicant… just some general thoughts, that I already figured, like
applying to programs like Denver would be a waste of time/money. He also strongly advocated applying to a lot
of Ohio/Midwest programs… a little disappointing, but realistic, I
suppose. I’d rather not stay in
this region…
While we
were talking broadly about how my personality comes across – I have some
concerns about not being the most extroverted, gunner-type med student out
there – he said that during my month on ER, I got the highest clinical evals of all the students there! He actually said that I need to sell that
aspect of my personality as much as possible… that ER docs prefer low-key vs high-strung… and that I don’t have to
approach things differently, only just to let my residents and attendings know early in my rotation that I want to be
evaluated and that I’m highly interested in their program… I
don’t get validation very often, so this was nice. I was pretty surprised, actually, since I
felt half-conscious a lot that month from studying-burnout…
Why Taking Bible Verses Out of
Context is Fun (recommended by a recently bitter friend):
1)
“I find more
bitter than death
the
woman who is a snare,
whose
heart is a trap
and
whose hands are chains.” -- Ecc 7:26a
2)
“I found one upright man among a thousand,
But not one upright woman among them all.” -- Ecc
7:28b
HIPAA Enhancement Suggestions:
- “De-identify”
patients: remove all identifiable
markings, including sanding off tattoos and randomly removing teeth to
confuse dental record spies.
- Take
all license plates off all the cars in the ED parking lot so pesky
detectives can’t identify them.
- Ask
patients for the middle 4
numbers of their social security number at registration.
- Give
patients disguises . . . . Not only
will this help protect patients from health information abuse, but it can
be fun dressing up… ‘You’re the third fireman/maid
I’ve seen today.’
- Randomly
order diagnostic tests and treatment so no one can identify a patient by
their management.
Taken from: Freeman J. HIPAA Enhancements to Improve
Emergency Department Security. Ann Emerg Med,
2004; 43: 657-9.
July 1, 2004
Whoohoo!:
I just got
an email saying that my student-run clinics research project got accepted for
the ACEP (
I’m an Idiot:
I had a
hard time connecting by WiFi at Panera
with my new compooter… putzed
around with the settings and configurations for like 30-45 minutes before
giving up and calling up the Panera help line…
after about 5-10 minutes of double-checking all the correct settings I had
already set, the guy asks if there’s an on/off button for the wireless
card…
I’m
an idiot… Lucky for the human
race, I’m not going into surgery…
Where’s my Mary-Jane?:
I think I
deserve one. Spideyman
2 was a pretty decent movie. Fun fight
scenes. Toby shows more emotional range
in this movie than in the past… although that’s not saying much. Kirsten Dunst plays
her character consistently, even if MJ isn’t very complex. Plot-wise, it’s much simpler than the
first movie – fewer moral reflections.
Only complaints are it was a bit choppy at points, and I found the movie
to oscillate a bit uncomfortably between very mature subject matter (also some
fairly graphic violence for PG-13) and comic book implausibility. I thought X-Men was better at maintaining the
proper balance. Example, at one point,
when Aunt Mae gives a moral exposition to Peter, while starting to recoil
against the ridiculous monologue, I had to remind myself that it was a comic
book moment.
Band of Brothers:
Rewarded
myself for finishing third year by finally buying Band of Brothers. Really
good series. It’s much less
introspective and moralistic than Saving
Private Ryan, but it’s still excellent. A lot more of portraying the raw emotion and
experience of combat, while SPR
invokes them. Although, I didn’t
buy into David Schwimmer’s (how do you spell
his name?) part. Just watched episode 9
“Why we fight” which was surprisingly a fairly emotionally
difficult piece to watch. I really
enjoyed episode 6 “
Anytime I
watch a WWII movie… it always awes me about the human cost of war…
in the case of the 101st Airborne, that some units had casualty
rates of 200-300%... is not only impossible to imagine, but just totally
ridiculous when you realize that nowadays a casualty rate of 10% = complete
decimation.
June 29, 2004
Plans Falling Through:
I had a couple options for my upcoming birthday, but they've fallen through...
Kind of a bummer. Well, maybe I'll think of something fun...
Work work work...:
My week off is filling up with work... personal statement... CV... research papers...
meeting with docs to write me letters of rec... gotta start studying up on emergency med for my away
rotations too... ugg. But, looking
forward to meeting with Dr. Brickman today.
He's the chair of ER at MCO. Since he's not affiliated with any residency
program, I'm hoping he'll give me an honest, relatively unbiased opinion on how
competitive I am... Am I more
