Island Med Student

I just got home from my last emergency medicine night shift. Oh, how I wish I had done 4 weeks instead of 2 weeks! I just can’t say enough how incredibly awesome it was.

As always, I am pooped to the max, and can’t type in coherent sentences, so here is a random jumble of my emergency medicine night shifts:

diagnosed a non-stemi mi, squirted a lot of blood when setting up IVs, diagnosed many cases of PID, watched my first patient jump because of my assessment for cervical motion tenderness (positive chandelier’s sign), saw many young women with chest pain which ended up being anxiety, convinced a psych patient that we were administering an anti-emetic, not an anti-psychotic, assessed a zillion patients for costo-vertebral angle tenderness, took gonorrhea and chlamydia cultures, fought with and restrained very intoxicated patients, snuck off to eat ice cream at dunkin donuts, wrapped the knee of a patient handcuffed to a bed while he cussed at me, reduced a dislocated shoulder, performed 100,000 digital rectal exams, treated a patient with DKA, befriended many police officers and EMTs, refused to make tea for a drunk patient, provided a billion vomitus bags, took an ABG, placed foley catheters, examined a grossly swollen scrotum, walked patients to the bathroom, emptied a billion bedpans and urinals, tried to place a bedpan underneath an intoxicated lady urinating on the floor standing up but had it kicked back on to me and was called some very bad names, palpated a trillion abdomens, wrote scripts, discharged patients, performed neurological exams, took many peak flows, gave a tetanus shot, aroused an unarousable man from an OD stupor, consoled the unconsolable, was complimented on my ability to perform a gentle digital rectal exam, auscultated a million hearts and lungs, palpated for veins, smiled at patients who needed a smile, stopped a demented patient from masturbating in the hallway, talked with families, increased my spanish vocabulary, made friends with nurses, loved my patients.

and that’s really just a sprinkling.

good night!

Note: Photo is of a mural I see on my walk home from the hospital.

“Yo Brooklyn, Fuhgeddaboudit” Photo Series