Things I never thought were possible...

Wards "Senior"

I still find it hard to come to terms with the fact that I am an R3 and supposedly wise, a good leader, etc. I have spent the last three weeks being the "senior" resident on the family medicine wards. When I heard Elis on the phone the other day say, "I think that would be fine... let me just run it by my senior," I thought to myself, "Whoa. That would be me. How is it possible that I am somehow responsible for many of the decisions around here??" Just over a year ago (as I did my "intern" month on wards in May or something of my intern year), I was the intern!! Anyway, I have been pseudo-supervising service for the past 3 weeks and, miraculously, it has gone quite well. Elis and Lynn, my interns, have been hardworking, fabulous, and fun, and I've also been blessed with an awesome AI (acting intern), Emilie, a super "MIC" resident, Kristen (in charge of moms and babies), Susanna and then Phi as night float, good attendings, and good times with Kelvin and Char, who have been on the newborn service but who have kept us us company in the call room and entertained all the while. It really hasn't felt all that much like "work."

We have gotten some great laughs, out of our patients, too, the highlights including:

- a demented nursing home patient who called me names I won't even MENTION on this blog and tried to whack-me-good while I was trying to put in a central line.
- another geriatric patient who, when told we were trying to place her in a SNF (skilled nursing facility) stated, "the last place I was at, they locked me up like a tomato!" Umm... This was followed, just a few minutes later, by a similar statement about being "locked up like a cucumber," at which point I could not keep a straight face any longer. Since when are vegetables held hostage?

And the stories go on...

While the service started out pretty light, it has gotten busy at times! I took two back-to-back 24 hour Saturday calls which works out nicely in terms of knowing the ward patients, but which ends up being pretty tiring. The first Saturday, I think I had something like 9 discharges, 4 OB triage pts, a labor and delivery, newborn to admit, ER admission, and TMTC (too many to count) phone triage calls which ends up being a LOT of EMR note-writing.

Last Saturday, I had a pretty relaxing day, but then ended up having 4 back-to-back ER admissions between about 1:30 and 6:30 a.m. The unbelieveable thing was that in most other circumstances, I would have gotten overwhelmed, stressed, and probably shut down (or cried) and not gotten through it all. Somehow, I have gotten to the point to breathe deeply, gear up, and just take one thing at a time. Although I think I am pretty slow sometimes, I guess that even I have learned something about efficiency and multitasking in residency. Amazing. Definitely something I did not think was possible.

Labor coming at a convenient time...

(which I never thought was, and still realize never will be, possible...)

I had 2 OB patients due this past month (and have a few more "on deck"). I actually tried to plan being on wards at the time that they were term because I would "be around" to catch them in case they came into triage or were in active labor during my day shift. However, despite being physically at the hospital for 100+ hours for the last 3 weeks including those weekend calls as well as rounding every day and being there 12+ hours per day including some late nights, who wants to guess when they came in in labor and delivered? Between the hours of 1800 and 0200 when I was actually supposed to be off (and asleep) :). Ah. Don't we wish we could plan labor around doctors' (residents') schedules?

The first was a patient of mine whose baby was breech until 37 weeks and who we had successfully verted (I was so psyched after this!). She came in ruptured while we were playing Tuesday frisbee. I rushed back to the hospital afterwards, despite Phi's statement that I was being crazy for going back so soon and his bet (a yogurt) that she would not deliver before midnight (I was sure she would!). Let's just say that I think Phi should reserve his betting for Vegas and not for my OB patients! A very smooth labor course and fewer than 4 hours later, she delivered, 9 minutes shy of midnight, a beautiful baby girl (and no, I did not use pitocin, a vacuum, OR nazi-like pushing coaching to "cheat" to win).

My second patient came in two nights later and, poor thing, ended up having a Code C-section called TWICE (the first was while I was still at home laying my head down for a brief moment...) for fetal bradycardia, but baby's heart rate always recovered once she was moved back to the OR. We ended up just doing the c-section due to "fetal intolerance of labor," and silly baby came out circa 2 am with her hand gripping the umbilical cord.

While tiring, it was all worth it.

And now some pictures from recent social events:

What I will do for a yogurt:

My second wasabi challenge in two years (consisting of downing a good-sized blob, unaccompanied by any sushi or anything else to eat)

Trying not to puke ... which is where the real challenge was...

(I still have four yogurts to claim after that one). Yes. I will eat anything. Especially for yogurt.

Phi's birthday: dim sum (+ chicken feet)

Brenden, me, Phi, Matt, Sarah

Never thought I would see Sarah eat chicken feet... mmm :)

Being more tired than my interns

I just enjoyed a beautiful weekend off, courtesy of my stellar interns who, although it was their terminal weekend of their rotation, would not let me come in to round at all.

THANK YOU!!!

What did I spend my Sunday doing?

Skydiving!!!!

Yes. I, someone who is deathly afraid of little eight-legged creatures, conversations with strangers, and who would not get anywhere near a bungee cord even for posterity at Bloukrans Bridge in South Africa, jumped out of a plane at 13,000 feet!

It was a spontaneous decision, but Kelvin and I headed out to check out Skydive Sacramento in Lincoln, CA, which is about 40 minutes from here, for the week's adrenaline rush.

This being the first "jump" for both of us, we went tandem with an instructor.

Here is us, pre-jump. Not at all scared-looking, right? :)

While riding up in the plane, I asked Nick, one of the guides, "how high up are we?" He answered, "Oh, about 1500 feet. 12,000 more to go." !!!!! Despite this, I seriously was totally calm until the very moment when I had to step off the edge of the aircraft and realized that this was quite a crazy thing we had decided to do!

The freefall was intense. It was 1 minute, and 8000 feet, and I felt like I couldn't breathe because of the wind and air in my face. The view was awesome, though. I have never felt anything like it. I really enjoyed the "coasting" part with the parachute deployed, where we sort of soared around looking down at the fields.

Here are the pics that the photographer took of Kelvin. Cool, huh? I'm kind of glad there weren't pics of me on the freefall, because you probably would have seen just a very terrified expression reading something like, "Oh my gosh. I'm going to die. I'm so going to die" (not good for their advertising, either!).

Here is me, though, on the landing. :)

And us afterwards. With my very wind-swept hair.

And, just in case you don't believe that I jumped out of a perfectly-functioning airplane today, here is my certificate to prove it :)




Surprised?? :)