A Jonah Day

Anne, by what somebody has called "a Herculaneum effort," kept back her tears until she got home that night. Then she shut herself in the east gable room and wept all her shame and remorse and disappointment into her pillows. . .wept so long that Marilla grew alarmed, invaded the room, and insisted on knowing what the trouble was.

"The trouble is, I've got things the matter with my conscience," sobbed Anne. "Oh, this has been such a Jonah Day, Marilla. I'm so ashamed of myself. I lost my temper and whipped Anthony Pye." - From Anne of Avonlea

Haven't we all had one before? A day like today, when nothing seems to go right. I should have known. I woke up with a weird nagging feeling that made me NOT want to go to work. Ahh! That never happens, eager beaver that I am! But the feeling was there, and I seriously didn't really feel like going in today [see Truffles! I told you I had ESP....we seriously need to do a case report on this instead of our ethics project]. But in I went anyway, and I was still excited and pumped to get some interviews today.

Alas, good plans are often laid to waste. Why? One condition of the study I'm doing is that we have to talk to the clinical team first before talking to the families. Fair enough, as 99.99% of the time they know a lot more than me and can offer a lot of insight into how the families are feeling at the moment. But sometimes (especially now, aka beginning of the 'school' year for residents when some residents are very new, and some have never been in this type of unit before, much less know or care about the study I'm doing b/c I'm sure they have much more important things to think about, like maybe saving lives?) it can be real pain to do this. Because like I said before, a lot of the residents are really new, some fresh out of med school, so they can't really answer my questions. Actually, some are really confused as to why we're asking (bugging) them with these questions in the first place. Another thing which is annoying is that when I want to talk to them, I can never find them. They're either (1) at teaching (2) eating lunch or and this is the big one (3) rounding. Yup, at the new place, it seems like rounds go on and on and on for the whole day. So much so that... get ready for this... I'm beginning to ... really... dislike them! Ahh! What's happening? But honestly, it's really frustrating when you want to talk to the family who's standing right in front of you, but can't because you haven't spoken to the docs who have been rounding since midnight or something. Okay rant done.

Yeah, so no interviews, who cares right? But if you're like me, when it rains, it pours. Our 'office' in the other hospital is actually a floor up from the unit. So when you want to go to the unit, you have to walk down some stairs and then unlock a door which will lead you right smack into the middle of the unit. Normally, very convenient right? So today (being the enthusiastic research assistant that I am) in my excitement, I ran down the stairs and flung open the door HARD... to find 6 heads turned in my direction, and on them, 6 pairs of M.D. eyes staring at me. Yup, I had walked right into the middle of rounds. What made it worse was that I had to walk into the middle of their little huddled circle, move in front of the attending, while muttering sorry, sorry, excuse me, excuse me, in order to get out. Oh the humiliation.

But I'm not quite done yet. Later on in the day, I had to go retrieve a poster from one of the attendings, let's call her Dr. NEJM. So I went to her office, knocked loudly. I peered into the window and to my horror saw that she was talking on the phone. At the moment, I thought of 3 options A) This was a nightmare B) Run away C) Hope that she hadn't heard me. But of course, she did, and she opened the door. Groveling began. Worse yet, she told me she was talking on long distance! But thank goodness Dr. NEJM is as nice as she is smart. Poster in hand, I walked/ran away quickly to my desk.

So pheww what a day. Of course you know what the only cure for a day like today is right?

A bowl of ice cream and window shopping on the net for Louboutin shoes