Ouch!

Bad news? I hurt my back yesterday. It was so bad that to bend, change positions, basically MOVE was excruciatingly horrible. I was going around like a 102-yr old man who needs a cane. Ugh.. so yucky.

Good news? I work in an office filled with docs who are very willing to give you an opinion/diagnosis/treatment all wrapped into one.

Yesterday when I went into talk with Dr. BossMan, I had to gingerly lower myself onto the chair. But even small movements like this caused me to yelp out in pain, which led to him asking what the matter was. When I said I hurt my back, he (so like a doc) did a quick HPI, then went on to tell me about HIS back problems last year where he had a herniated disc which led to an L5 radiculopathy and foot drop. Uh, not very comforting. Good for me was that I didn't have any neuropathic symptoms. So he gave me two ibuprofens and told me to take them (I'm a good patient so I did as I was told).

Unfortunately, this did nothing and the pain progressively got worse! Ugh! So I was hobbling around the place (trying to compensate for my weirded out back) when Dr. C, I guess noticed my strange gait:

Dr. C (in a super nice voice)
Did you hurt your ankle Stuff?
Stuff
No, I threw my back out.
Dr. C (again, super sweetly)
Oh... that's horrible. Do you want some ibuprofen? I have some right now I can give you?
Stuff (internally dying from the whole swoon-worthy conversation)
Oh no that's alright. Dr. BossMan just gave me two.

Okay, altogether now.... AWWWW... Gosh darn it...

Now brace yourself. It only gets better. Today, as I stormed into the office, being in a huff because I was slightly late, I rushed past Dr. C who was standing at the shiny, new espresso machine (daily ritual for all the attendings):

Dr. C (calling out to Stuff)
How's your back?
Stuff to self
Gah! He's talking to me again! Okay, no facial vasodilation allowed.
(gives pained look to Dr. C)
Dr. C
Oh no! Did you take ibuprofen? I can give you some if you want.
Stuff(swoons)
No that's okay, it didn't really work yesterday.

After said swoonage, and as I was coming out of the bathroom, I noticed Dr. C, the research coordinator standing outside Dr. Nice's office. Guess what they were discussing?..... Yep... my back

The RC & Dr. C seemed to think that I needed naproxen, or maybe try some more ibuprofen +/- acetaminophen (Dr. C, aka the human pharmacy it seems, tells me he has both). He also asked me to show him where the pain was & if it extended down the legs (see! see! so doctory). Dr. Nice, however, thought I should just try to rest & sleep it off. In the end, the consensus was to give ibuprofen another try...which I did.. and lo & behold... it worked!

So I've been (relatively) pain-free for the rest of today, and am crossing my fingers this whole business is not due to placebo.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again... I love me MY docs!

P.S. Truffles, I have one week to get over this 'sine curve' that is Dr. C =P
Please remind me next week.

Perks...

...of being a research scutmonkey? Free medical advice!

I kid, I kid. But really? It's that you do get (relatively) easy access to world experts on different medical areas. Want to know about ventilators? Last door down the hall. Subarachnoid hemorrhages? Right next to that. It's pretty cool, come to think of it. Just wish that I more time & ballsy to ask sometimes.

Today was what you call a two-for-oner. You see I'm currently doing work on a study on ARDS. Dr. BossMan is supposed to be a world-expert on this. I am not. This is why today I had an appointment with him to go over tons of patients chest x-rays (CXRs) to determine whether or not they actually had ARDS, so that I could start & finish data collection. As we were going through the first couple, he asks me 'if I want to learn CXRs or not.' Um... do you even have to ask? If you can't tell by now, I, Stuff, am a huge nerd. So given the chance to learn about reading CXRs with an expert? Of course! I was just waiting for him to offer.

It was good. He talked about air bronchograms, looking at the heart borders, lung volumes, atelectasis. Showed me what he was looking at (because honestly, those air bronchograms are tough to spot... Sometimes you have to squint really hard... I wasn't sure if I was imagining things or not at times... Kind of like the JVP huh?), quizzed me a bit, asked me what my diagnosis was before he gave me the answer (which was really scary at first, but it's actually quite helpful). Put up with my inevitable stupid questions. You know, all that fun stuff.

I was a lucky girl today.

P.S. Apparently doctors here hate getting their picture taken. I'm trying to update the research board and NO ONE at hospital número 1 is replying me

You know it's bad, when my admiration for Dr. C is going down because of this. Not replying to my email? Grrr...I'm offended. I think he's avoiding me because he doesn't want his picture taken. And Dr. BossMan has a million excuses for not giving us one. Double grrr...

Unluckily lucky

I must be a magnet for bad luck. Walking into doors, getting splashed by cars, gum on the shoe, that's me.

Today was out to lunch with Dr. BossMan again and us research assistants. It was a nice day so naturally we took a patio seat, under the sunshine, trees AND (duh duh duh - ominous music) the birds. Birds, or pigeons to be more specific, don't like me. They like to block my path along sidewalks, come up to me for food and fly over my head, dangerously close. So I should have known, or expected that together with my luckiness with the unlucky, something like this would happen.

Happily eating my sushi (comfortably this time, because Dr. C is on call this week and thus could not come) I did not realize that somewhere an evil, evil pigeon decided to have a BM right onto my chair, where in that exact spot my jacket was lying. And of course, being me, I did not notice said leftovers of that evil bird's dinner and touched my sleeve to it! All together now... EWWWW


Yup, I was pooped on. And as luck would have it, the ENTIRE TABLE saw it. Dr. BossMan, two of the fellows who'd come along, the research coordinator, ugh.

They say that getting pooped on by a bird is actually lucky. Tell that to my jacket, and my pride. I'm gonna go now to wash this 'luck' off. Hopefully, something better will fall on me tomorrow.

[Do you think I should buy a lotto ticket just in case? ]

P.S. Truffles, my dislike of birds does not extend to your bird. He and I like each other just fine. It's okay by me if he still flies on my head (so long as he doesn't BM me).

P.P.S Overheard one day while in office:

Dr. Nice [huddled around ultra-new 'espresso' machine (which apparently grinds, froths, steams, brews... I'm surprised it doesn't make a cake too!) with residents before 'teaching.']
So if you want to have an espresso, you add 30 cc's of water

Ah, sign of career melding into life.

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