Buses, Babies, and Broken things

Since my last post a lot has happened, but this time I'm going to talk about my experiences in reverse chronological order starting with today, and going backwards. here goes.


Late Sunday night Sarah was arriving on a bus from Detroit. She had taken the megabus, and it was set to arrive in Chicago at 1 am. But as with all public transport it was set to arrive late. Now, a side note about megabus. This company puts large graphics on their buses, but they failed to acknowledge the mechanical parts of the bus's layout first, resulting in this.

This my friends is an unhappy accident. I give you the Hitler bus. 

Unfortunate mishaps aside, Sarah arrived at 2am and we drove home quietly along Lake Shore drive. I had to be up at 7am the next morning so I went to bed promptly. My current rotation is OBGYN or everything related to women, birth, babies and reproductive studies.  I had a very long day at the Clinic today. We had so many patients back to back to back that I managed not to eat for 10 hours. (This may not seem like much but for me was a special kind of torture.)  Nonetheless, a long day without eating on only a few hours of sleep  made me have an early night (9pm bed time , which is also the earliest I've gone to bed since I was a child)

So I close my eyes and fall asleep. 

My phone rings at 2 am with my Doctor  on the line. (The one I follow at the hospital) "We have a delivery and we'll see you at the hospital ASAP!" 

Up I went. I got dressed in record time. I packed up my backpack with my lunch, my computer and something to drink and out the door I went. The average time it take me to get to the hospital in the morning when leaving at 8 am is 40 mins. When you leave for work at 2am though, 19mins. I was the only car on the road for most on my ride. So I cruising down Lake Shore drive and make a few turns here and there. Before I knew it I was 5 minutes out. I was going along and came to a cross street under a bridge with limited visibility. The light was red. So  stopped quickly. (And I didnt learn from my mom all these years when she would put out her arm to prevent my head from slamming the dashboard when stopping quickly)  My backpack that was on the passenger's side seat took flight and after doing a graceful back-flip, landed on the floor with a nice crunch. And here is the result: 

My poor laptop took the hit, but luckily I'm using it to type this very blog... for now.

So I continue to the hospital,  park, and fly up the elevator to Labor and Delivery. I got my scrubs on and walked into the room and within a minute I was there to catch the baby with my doctor. The Doc let me essentially deliver the baby. I delivered the placenta no problem and mom and baby are doing great.  I describe this delivery passively because like I said earlier, I'm working backwards in my storytelling. This was my second delivery :-)

I've been in my OBGYN rotation  for 3 full weeks now. I've learned and experienced so much in so very little time. In this rotation I've gotten to watch and perform Ultrasound. I've been able to tell a new mother she is pregnant for the first time, I've been able to identify fetal organs and heart beats. I've been able to identify the gender of the fetus and see the smiles of happy couples and now I've been able to hand over the newborn child for the mother to hold for the first time. Its a very rewarding rotation.  

The time in the clinic is very similar each day. We see very common infections, and other STD's. We also doing prenatal care (care for mom /fetus for 38weeks prior to delivery). The routine of seeing patients and writing logs on patients has become second nature (although I still need more practice).

The first delivery  I helped perform came on my 1st ever overnight shift at the hospital. It was a surreal feeling staying overnight knowing that anything,( or nothing) could happen. I spent my time working with a resident that night. After getting acquainted with the floor and layout, I spent a few hours studying in the lounge. That's when we got a call. The mom had come in with contractions 5 mins apart. The resident and I saw the pt and went back to the lounge to start writing a pt log and received a call a minute later. Her water broke. So we rushed back to L&D and got gloved and gowned . and before we knew it.

The baby came out in a matter of seconds. The resident taught me everything I now know about delivering a baby. he showed me the proper way to  get the head out, Checking to see if the cord is around the neck. (It's better if it isn't!) And using suction to get the gunk out of the baby's airway. How to clamp and cut the cord, Taking a sample of cord, and delivering the placenta. He even showed me how to examine the baby and after all the commotion has slowed down. I had a smile on my face the entire time.   

Going back further to the end of my pysch rotation. First off, I got an A in my Pysch rotation and nailed my Shelf exam! YES.  So that made me pretty happy. 

Moving on.  So life in the city has been a lot of fun. For my birthday Sarah gave me some super stylish cufflinks of the caduceus :

The cats have been a special kind of "good." The new guy we adopted we named Spock. and before too long we started calling him "Suck." he is trully wonderful being, but he is the equivelent of a child in the terrible 2's.  He cries and poops and constantly needs loving... but only from the hours of 2am-6 am. (We like the last part most of all).  The kitties get along  like dropping Pure sodium into a bucket of water. (if you dont know what that looks like you're in for a real treat)

http://i.imgur.com/jBQqXeB.gif

(put the link  above into your web browser or click it and watch)

We actually went as far as to give Spock a middle name of Ulysses, just to make his initials :

SUK.

So is name is basically suck. :-)  

Here they are in daily life.

And she also got me a portable disc golf basket! So the weekend I got this we went to the beach and I practiced my throwing (putting) and had a great time. 

That's it for now!

The world in vivid color.

In the week leading up to orientation I became very active online with Ross students just to make sure everything was in order going into the start of my rotations (also called clinicals). Just a reminder, the next two years of my medical experience is called my rotations or clinicals, not residency. (residency comes later in the timeline)  Anywho, in the days leading up I noticed that several people in my class were informed to report to the hospital on Thursday (5 days prior to when I thought my rotation started). When I noticed this it was Wednesday.  So I began what any sane person does:           Freak. Out.



 Luckily some friends of mine sorted out that the important email I missed stating the time to arrive Thursday had been sent to my Junk mail folder (ugh). So I know now to be more careful.


Was I ready to start? Mentally I still had five days, but in reality I had hours. So I prepared what I could and went to bed knowing the big day had arrived.






Orientation was held in a room that would have been better used as a greenhouse. It was smoldering.  This day was -10 F outside and the room temperature was somewhere in the vicinity of making humans melt. Nonetheless orientation was helpful in filling me in on the basics of what to expect. A student that had just completed the "track" program at my hospital gave us the quick and dirty ways to study for the "Shelf" exams and for the Boards. ( A track is when I complete all of my core rotations [Psych, OBGYN, Peds, Surgery, Family Medicine, Internal medicine etc.] all at the same hospital, as opposed to traveling all over the USA doing one here and there.) (A shelf exam is the exam I take after each rotation mentioned above) (The boards are one of the 3 major exams that if I pass, makes me a Doctor)

After all of that, I re-condensed myself from the melted, liquid, form of  me and went home knowing that the real deal started on Monday.,



The first week of Psych proved to be very enlightening. I saw things in real life that I had been studying for a few years, only to see real cases right before my eyes. Mania, depression, schizophrenia and paranoia, I saw vast variety of mental illness. My job each day has been to interview the patients on the psych ward each morning. Interviewing I have always felt was a weaker skill of mine, until now. Oftentimes interviewing a mentally ill patient can prove difficult, but for whatever reason, they liked to talk with me.  I took a particular liking the manic patients. To paint a picture, I like to think of Robin Williams. When he was living, he was one of the best comedians to ever walk the earth. He was able to rattle off voices, speak rapidly and change thoughts and subjects in his head without batting an eye and all with a comical tone and manner unmatched by anyone. It's like his brain was on triple speed and his tongue was even faster. Think of his role as the genie in the movie Aladdin.  These patients were happy,  excited, energetic, and just plain fascinating.


The doctors have lectured us on various topics, and challenged us to learn both the pharmacological name and the trade name of the common drugs used in psychiatry. With regular use though has become second nature.


Today my group of med students went to visit a higher functioning set of patients in the IOP (Intense Outpatient Program). Let me tell you,  it was intense. These people travel to the hospital from a local nursing facility and take part in 3, 1 hour programs during a day and they do this 3-5 times a week. I was lucky enough to be able to learn a great deal from these people about their problems and ways to cope with them. One client in particular singled me out. This person I would describe as having Narcissistic personality disorder.  (A state of mind where you have a great sense of self-worth, better than those around you, and demand the respect of others).  This person and I talked for a few hours about his life and history. In our conversation he presented an interesting metaphor to describe his problems. With a past of working in electronics for many years, he described people as being in one of two categories: the color TV or the black and white TV. Let me elaborate. He explained that in the old days that the B&W TV's were equipped with a gizmo that could only understand a B&W TV signal. With the invention of the Color TV, additional equipment within the TV was needed to interpret the color signal.  Now think of this color TV signal as what our human experience is on earth could be. He described people as either being a "color" TV or the "B&W" TV, you are either equipped to see the world as it was meant to be seen (in color), or you lacked the equipment and your experience on earth was dulled (B&W). He described himself as having this special equipment to extract details from the world that others neglect or aren't equipped to see. I'm quite certain that he had this gift too, for he was very intelligent. His problems however stemmed from this thinking that he was enlightened far beyond his peers and that they could not understand him because he was so vastly intelligent. He spent his time trying to develop inventions to help the world. He is so preoccupied with his intelligence that he believes cancer researchers have taken his ideas on how to battle cancer using radiation (he has zero medical background whatsoever). I have no doubt he would succeed given the right resources, however. I found this individual fascinating, and I hope I described my experience well enough for you to feel it too.



I hope to continue having a positive experience throughout my rotations and I hope to share them with you.

Thanks for reading!