You know you're in residency when. . .

you're extremely excited about sleeping in tomorrow morning. . . and sleeping in = 6:15 am.

Apologies if you've seen this before

It's been on youtube for a while. If you've not seen this before humor me. Go over to a couch or pillow and perform CPR compressions on it, try to keep your form good, arms straight and push at about 100 times/minute (the rhythm of "staying alive").

Now keep compressing and push play. Follow the instructions on the video (just count the number of times the white team passes the ball). It's over when there's a pause in the video.























Neat, right? (Of course no-attention-span me was the first person in the history of the program to notice the first time around. I reallly need to work on focusing.)

Save the bunnies!

Today was wound repair day, the majority of which was spent lacerating and then repairing pig's feet, which I always enjoy more that one might imagine. Somehow, the topic of wound research was raised, and one of the physicians brought up the methodology behind one of the major studies on how the size of injury relates to the risk of infection.

So how was it done? Basically, the researchers dropped heavier and heavier weights onto bunny rabbits, exposed them to bacteria, and observed which bunnies got the most infected.

I would like you to keep in mind, next time you rub on some neosporin, or put on a bandaid, or get stitches, that partially responsible for the healing of your injury, is a squished bunny.

Thank you bunnies.

overheard in the ED part two

later that night:

Same resident: My patient in three says her last doctor told her that she had a condom stuck on her ovary once.

Staff physician: Man, I would really love to have a look at her boyfriend.

overheard in the ED

circa midnight.

Resident: Hey med student, I have a patient in 14 with watery, irritated eyes and copious malodorous vaginal discharge. What do you think's going on with her?

::long pause::

Student: umm. . . maybe she's crying about the copious vaginal discharge?

The trend continues. .

Tonight I sewed up the faces of three men who were all "just minding their own business" when they, respectively, were pistol whipped in the face, punched in the eye with brass knuckles, and had their throat slashed from behind.

Dangerous stuff.

did not see that coming

Chief complaint (direct quote): "Back hurts. Oh, and it feels like my butthole is crying."

History revealed nothing. Healthy young woman, a bit on the plus size of plus size, regular periods, no lady-part complaints of any kind, no urinary tract infection symptoms, no history of trauma or back strain, really no complaints at all except the above.

Well my oh-so-lucky male intern friend gamely helped the lass undress to discover what exactly she could mean by this (expecting some kind of sore, abscess maybe?) and discovered, I kid you not, a full term just-born infant. In her pants.

She was surprised, to say the least. As was her husband. And the nurse. And the intern. And all of us.

Both baby and mom are doing fine.

Weird stuff.

Ahhhhhhhh!

Most squirm-inducing patient of the week:

Medical student bursts into the call room, runs over to the attending looking super nervous: "excuse me, sir, my patient said her ear hurt and I looked in there with the ear light thing, and I'm pretty sure. . . she's got a bee in there."

A few seconds of silence, and then of course we all had to go take a look. And yes, indeed, full sized honeybee.

Then poor lady had to suffer through the medical student extra-nervously trying and failing to remove the bee in its entirety with a pair of forceps. Half the body ended up sticking to her tympanic membrane. Eventually we rinsed the thing out with about 30 minutes of flowing water.

Not fun.

And yet another addition to my life list of things-I-didn't-think-I-had-to-worry-about-but-really-really-should-be-worrying-about-constantly. Considering permanent skin grafts over my auditory canal.

Oh noes

I've discovered the most dangerous thing one can do in this city. Here are three true stories from last night:

-"I was on my front porch, minding my own business, when these three guys came up yelled a bunch of stuff at me and hit me up the back of the head with their gun."

-"I was sitting on the couch minding my own business when my family came in and tried to kill me and cut me and stabbed me in the neck."

"I was just minding my own business when the police started chasing me and sent their dogs after me. Once the dog took me down it bit through my arm; then the police kicked me in the head a bunch of times and arrested me."

Scary stuff! Remind me please to never ever mind my own business ever again.

(Disclosure, that second one was actually a hallucination, but I think even a hallucination of your grandma stabbing you in the neck is a fairly undesirable outcome of just minding your own business.)

chief complaint of the weekend

"25 year old male states he drank some beers last night, now complains of headache (10/10) and vomiting."

And yes, correct, I work in an emergency department.

Taxpayers, this is where the money goes.

Hello. :-)

Yum.