What a day

On Wednesday I took call with my Lebanese resident. I usually followed him because he liked teaching me things, quizzing me, and worked on the Pediatric Neurosurg team. Plus he always had tic tacs or gum that he'd hand out to EVERYONE. Me, fellow residents, the nurses we'd talk to, everyone. He must have the biggest gum stash on the planet. And he likes good music. So after he gave me a wicked awesome evaluation, I burned him a shitload of Radiohead B-sides set it an a pack of Eclipse in the on-call room for him yesterday.

Anyway, Wednesday was eventful. I did clinic during the day, saw a 4 month old boy come into the ER with head trauma (his cheeks were all chubbed out above his C-collar), and saw two lumbar punctures (spinal taps) on 2 little kids. My resident said I'd have to do LPs as a pediatrician, so I took careful mental notes. Afterward he always said "I'm sorry" to the little kids. One was a teeny tiny Amish girl with curly blonde hair. She had just finished crying from getting an IV placed. And then she had to get the shot of lidocaine to numb her back, and I think she felt some pressure from the spinal needle anyway, so it was more tears. At one point my resident told the little Amish mom, "ok, here is a point at which she needs to be perfectly still and not cry." Her Mom whispered something in Amish (is it Dutch? A variant of German? I need to do research), and she completely stopped crying and was still. It was amazing. I wonder what she said. We gave her tons of stickers afterwards, and in the morning when we rounded on her with the attending, she was all smiles eating a ham sandwich and chocolate pudding. She was able to go home that day. Plus she didn't have meningitis! =)

Wednesday night was nuts though because after rounds, we'd had a stroke emergency. My resident and I RAN. Literally sprinted through corridors to find the patient on his way into gettin an MRI. After that, 2 more admissions into the ER while the stroke victim underwent emergent angiocatheterization to try to break up his brain clot. At 11 we finally had time to see all the patients in the hospital on our list, so my resident had me check up on 2 of them. Neither of us had eaten dinner. At 12:35 my eyes were getting heavy and my resident ordered me to go home. I accidentally slept through my alarm by an hour, getting 3 hours of sleep instead of 2, and went in the next day to do it again.

It was in all honesty a lot of fun!