serendipti's Diaryland
Diary
11:38 a.m. - Saturday, Nov. 06, 2004
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first week o peds!
so i totally have old entries to upload, since diaryland can be a lil bitchita sometimes, and not allow me to add an entry. So you will get my musings, unchronologically for the next few entries. Perdon.
I am on call at the ped wards at the University of Illinois Hospital. On call means that while some of the other students got to go home friday afternoon and report monday at 7 am as usual, I got to wake up at 6 am again this morning, and get to be here overnight, through sunday morning. And then I come back monday morning. yeah, no weekend. no labor unions here folks, I am a student...I have *chosen* this....chosen 6 am wake up starting this past monday with my first day of peds, as well as tuesday through sun, and then monday through fri....so that will be a total of 12 simultaneous days of 6 am wake up......and i realize that this is not surgery or ob/gyn yet(i.e.4 am wake up), so the seasoned med peeps who are reading this are laughing at me, calling me a wimp and whatnot....but 12 days in a row of 6 am mornings...I mean, that just *feels* wrong, doesn't it???
Not that i am working hard or hating life. On the contrary, there is a ton of downtime, I love the team I am working with (i would love to be my intern's friend...she is so cool), the attending doc is the personification of the word 'cantankerous", but in that good way....she is this tough old broad who takes no shit...but is super caring and wants you to learn and does good things for the world....she came here as a resident, forty years ago, and here she has stayed. She kicks ass. And everywhere i turn, i learn. drugs. anatomy. pathology. physiology. it all coalsces so beautifully, and it makes sense when you see it, and I am asking a million questions, and I don't give a hoot if i look stupid, cuz who am i trying to impress anyway???? So work is good...i took the bus this morning....it was 38 degrees....yesterday, when i was waiting for the blue line el train at the Polk stop as the cold wind was blowing right through me, I wondered whether my resolve to not bring my car over was really all that firm...."we have to be firm and resolute"...uggghh.....and there is so much to write and process and digest and regurg from the Bush win, that I don't know where to begin.
So let me stick to my day to day right now, and leave that for the next entry.
I love the students I am working with, and so life is good. I only have one patient, with this super rare enzyme deficiency, citrullinemia, which blows because all her life (she is 15), she has had to measure everything that goes in her mouth, eat super limited protein, and have a g-tube coming out of her stomach to take these toxic smelling elixirs of measured out amino acid cocktails.....it makes you realize how blessed you are, really. And then when scheiBe goes down, she has super elevated ammonia, which can cause her to be totally out of it and start seeing things, and then she goes to the hospital to make sure the ammonia levels get decreased and don't permanently cause damage...the other day, my resident, intern and I were checking the latest labs, and her ammonia was decreased to about 80 (normal is less than 56), and she had been in the hundreds before, and so we saw this 80 and all four of us were like, "YES!" and we whooped and high fived.
desafortunadamente, today it has spiked...we thought we would be able to send her home, but it is not looking so good.
Though i have not been working that hard, the sheer pace of this 6am lifestyle is exhausting. I hit the bed and I am asleep. And i feel like taking naps all the time.
But it is nice being busy. It is nice finally changing gears from "boards zone" to being able to change my outgoing message back to something that does not say "I won't call you back"
i feel like I am slowly reclaiming my life, slowly being socialized again...re-entering into a world of dealing with people and talking and it is a bloody beautiful change from the library, i can tell you that much. So i am not minding the 6 am as much as i could.
I am wating for the board scores, however, and that weight is not leaving. 'weighting.'
Getting in a breakfast is not so easy. I have had, thus far, a glass of OJ, a banana, a cherry blow pop, and a bag of peanut mnms ( i thought peanut was a 'healthier' option than plain....)
I miss my mumby and the stachster. (mom and dad) And bhai and bhabhi. And jumbee. Apparently, bhabhi gained 13 pounds in the last month! Can you say MONSTER BABY!!!! yaaaayBY!
It is past noon. i must go get food now.
it has been really good reading peoples journals on my offtime. it is such a gift to have access to some of you guys like this. really. thanks so much.
love you!
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