Pontificum Scriblerus

I think I may have hit rock bottom Sunday. Of course, medical education is brutal, exploitative, masochistic - but I've always said, despite the negatives, it's totally worth it! Then, this weekend rolled around, at the end of which, for the first time, I seriously thought: I quit. It was an absolute ass storm. A repeated assault, lubeless. And just when I thought it was over, just when I was fluffing my pillow, they called me back in. I cried in the car, and threatened my husband that I'm quitting. Then I begged him to let me quit. Then, realizing that really, I can't quit, I just cried. I mean, what's left to do but cry when you FEEL gray hair growing and your face getting gaunter and gaunter? I'm too fucking old for this, I'm too grown up to be someone's bitch. To be brutalized and have my time stolen in order to take care of people who don't want to be taken care of. Who are looking to sue me. Who think they're doing me a favor by being my pa...

I post a lot of stuff about medicine and the medical profession, so, it occurred to me, that maybe when I bitch about how my world sucks, perhaps whatever readers I have can't relate because they don't understand this world. I wanted to write about how a hospital is organized and how things work within the system, and I wanted a diagram of the medical hierarchy - there is a hilarious representation somewhere that I wanted to show people. Instead, I came upon a blog entry by someone I don't know describing exactly what I wanted to describe, even using the same words. I read it and chuckled to myself, and tried to click on the writer's profile to see who it was - and found that this person had another blog . This one seemed like the person was no longer a resident, but an attending now. Then I looked at the date, and realized that the blog was dated 2007, and the first post was from 2004!! Funny, how things just don't change. Granted, this guy (or girl) clearly plagi...

Early on in the medical education you realize that you're going to go one of two ways: you're either Surgical or you're Medical. I'm using capitals here because they're more than just words; they represent a higher order of one's makeup, personality, work ethic, and human relations-wise. Surgical means you like discreet problem you can fix, get in, get out, be done with it; the patient says thank you, and you say see you later. You concentrate on one problem, and unless you subspecialize in something more cerebral, like transplant, you don't bother seeing the patient as a whole. You certainly don't bother with social issues like nursing homes, and most definitely avoid pontifications and indecisive trepidations. Surgeons get together at 5am so they can round on the floors, and then avoid the floors at all costs hiding out in the dungeons of the OR. They hire floormonkeys to work it upstairs: PAs, NPs, and interns. Past a certain point in your career, you...

Not sorry. Did we know he was gonna grow up to be my superman? Looking at this picture, I'm thinking, maybe a little boy isn't so bad either....

I'm sorry.

I'm on season 3 of Entourage, and I have a serious she-rection for Adrian Grenier. And I'm not ashamed. How can you not...

I was watching Comedy Central, and came upon a rerun of the Colbert Report. <a href="http://www.colbertnation.com/" target="_blank">The Colbert Report: Nixmas Tree Trimming - Kevin Bacon</a> The Colbert Report: Nixmas Tree Trimming - Kevin Bacon A couple of things. 1. Did Kevin Bacon always have such a deep manly voice? 2. Is Kevin Bacon looking a little piqued? He's awful pale, and his sharp cheek bones are practically skeleton like! 3. Why did Kevin Bacon go brunette and emo on us? He was much better with a Goyish cowlick. That is all.

Last Friday, we were carpooling to work at around 7 am. It had rained all night, and was promising to be a "yucky" day, and I only use that expressive word on very special occasions. All of a sudden, right on the town line between towns X and Y, the wet trees became icy trees. At the same time, my husband got a phone call from a co-worker who tells him that the power was out in the entire plant, and there will be a shutdown. Once I talked him into not dropping me off in the middle of the road, I allowed myself to unleash moderate amounts of envy at his unexpected day off. But that was just the beginning of a wonderous day, weekend, week. I was rushing that morning because I had a transplant meeting to go to, and it's serious business, especially for me, who suffers from chronic retardiness; everyone shows up super-on-time, and the thing starts on the dot - so imagine my surprise when I get there, punctually for once, and the room is empty. People are trickling in, e...

As much as I can promise myself that I won't allow my job to change my lifestyle and give up the things I like, after a while, it's inevitable, like death or taxes. I find that the longer I work, the more rooms in my house start to get ignored. The first room to go was the basement gym. When we were moving in, I was ecstatic, because even though I had to rescind my fancy shmancy gym membership downtown, there was a small, but complete, gym in the building. I conjectured that if I had trouble making it to the fancy gym because it's so far away from home, the small home gym would be the perfect solution, and money saver. Turns out, it wasn't the distance. Traversing the hallway to the fitness area turned out to be as much of a job as taking the T into town. The second room to bite the dust was the kitchen. Last year, I had all this time, so much, in fact, that I went as far as to take cooking lessons. I was totally into trying new things: I learned to make a Tarte Tatin, ...

I had a French cruller on Saturday for the first time in what, 10 years probably? and it was SOOO good... Melt in your mouth, let's get outta here before I get another one good. It got me thinking about all the other things I've tried to convince myself I hate. Successes: 1) Chinese food Complete and utter failures, resulting in guilty binges: 1) Pizza 2) Donuts 3) Cheap chocolate 4) Milk shakes 5) Burgers (oh, god, burgers) And things I hate but try to convince myself I love: 1) The gym And things I love and know I love: 1) My bed!! It's 9:30, way way past my bedtime.

I have a patient in the intensive care unit who's in with severe complications of alcoholism and on the brink of death. The ICU doctors told me that when they need to reach his father, the healthcare proxy, they have to call him because he doesn't come in. When they do call him, they have to phone in at a BAR! They call, and the barkeep picks up, just like on the Simpsons, passes the phone, and then they talk to the dad. And he then makes medical decisions. And for a little scatological humor... We've got another patient on the brink of death with C. Difficile, a terrible opportunistic infection of the gut. It happens when normal gut flora is wiped out by an antibiotic, and this bacteria overgrows and causes badness in the intestines. He's not responding to treatment. The next step?? STOOL transplant! Yup. They find a willing donor, usually a medical student who hasn't been around hospitals too much, take the... donation... and deliver it via nasogastric tube!!! I w...