Island Med Student

The last few days have been quite unpleasant, hence the absence of me from my blog. Friday was the last day of my pain management rotation, but I didn’t make it in to the hospital because I was in “pain.” Don’t you just love the irony?! I woke up Thursday night around midnight in horrible pain. My abdomen was gripped with 8/10 cramps, and I felt extremely nauseous. My head was pounding and I felt feverish as well. After about an hour of this torture, the crap really hit the fan! Well, actually, the vomit hit the floor. I began vomiting uncontrollably all over the floor beside my bed. After several rounds of this, my partner Micah carried me into the bathroom, plopped me into a bath, and placed a trashcan by my head to catch the vomit. To make a very long, and unpleasant story short, I didn’t get much sleep Thursday night, and by Friday morning I was in no shape to make it to the hospital, so I had to call in sick, and miss the last day of my rotation. Hopefully my attending will understand when I ask him for my evaluation next week.

I realized last night that I had been vomiting so much and so forcefully that it had caused petechial hemorrhaging around both of my eyes. I guess I’m lucky that it didn’t cause subconjunctival hemorrhaging as well (I’ve had that happen in the past with a bad case of food poisoning). I’m still not sure what exactly caused my ails, but I am starting to feel better today, and have tolerated a solid diet for almost 24 hours, so I think I’m mostly in the clear.

To share some better news, I have (with help from Micah) made some upgrades to my site over the past few weeks. I have added a new Publications tab, which has links to a few journal articles I’ve published and my Medscape articles. I’m not allowed to cross-blog my Medscape articles for the period of one year. So, I’ve gone back and updated all my Medscape posts, which are older than one year, so that they have the original post, and not just a link to the Medscape post.

We also put my site on a new, enterprise-grade server, which makes it load much faster (says Micah!), and we updated my Videos page so that the player is much nicer, and all of my YouTube videos are displayed. I hope you likey!

Yesterday (my birthday) was great! I got tons of happy birthday wishes (thank you, everyone!), and I got to do one of my most favorite things, lay in bed all day, pig out, and watch movies. It was very relaxing, and just what I needed.

Today was long, and wonderful. I just got home from 13 hours at the hospital for my pain management rotation. I’m too tired to share all the juicy details, but I got to see a lot of great cases and meet some wonderful patients. One of them was an ex IVDA (IV drug abuser), whose veins were all shot from years of abuse. He told me that he’d be a hard stick, so I spared him my poking, and got the anesthesiologist to place his IV access. I ended up talking to him for a while before his operation, and afterwards. He really opened up to me and shared some of his most intimate details. He told me how guilty he felt for abusing his body for so many years, and I pointed out to him that the most important thing is that he now takes care of himself, and has grown as a person. Eventually, he was in tears and I held his hand and tried to support him. Those are the moments that make long days completely bearable, and even more than that, meaningful.

Tomorrow I have a residency interview in Brooklyn. But now, it’s time to feed my calorie-starved body!

“Yo Brooklyn, Fuhgeddaboudit” Photo Series

“There is no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy licking your face.”
- Ben Williams

My mom recently sent me the above quote, and I thought it was too cute not to share. T’is soo very true! As I was searching for the above photo of my doggy Scope licking my face, I stumbled across the two below, and wanted to share them as well.

Today was a good day of “pain management.” I assisted on a cervical and lumbar epidural procedure, and observed a few others. I also had a nice, long talk with one of my patients about exercise. He had become overweight and it was exacerbating his spinal stenosis. Over the past year he’d lost 65 pounds, and he found that the weight loss had helped immensely with his pain. We started talking about how much we both enjoy exercise, and at one moment I had to grab his hand and just scream, “I KNOW!” because we both had the exact same feelings on exercise. We agreed that that there’s nothing more exhilarating than your own body’s endorphins, and a runner’s high is perhaps the best thing in the universe.

Anyway, it’s time for me to continue catching up on emails. If anyone out there is having a bad day, I recommend going for a run, or walk, or anything that gets your heart rate up. That, or find a cute puppy to lick your face!

For those of you wondering, yes I am still alive. I have been viciously busy lately, and that is my excuse for the absence from my blog. I will provide you with the abbreviated details. On Monday, I started a new elective rotation in pain management. More to come on that soon.

On Tuesday, I stuffed my interview suit, luggage, and two doggies into my Del Sol and drove down to Baltimore, Maryland. I woke up at the butt-crack of dawn on Wednesday to find that it had snowed about 4 inches! After digging my car out, I set out on my drive to Washington, D.C. for my residency interview.

I think the interveiw went very well, and during the Grand Rounds, I turned around to find my friend Sayeh (who I hadn’t seen in forever) sitting a few rows behind me. After the interview, we drove into Dupont Circle and searched for sushi for what seemed like days. Eventually we gave up and Sayeh scarfed down about 5,000 calories worth of food, with a little help from me. Then, she surprised me with a piece of chocolate birthday cake, with singing by the servers! (My birthday is on Sunday…but who doesn’t like starting early?)

I got home late on Wednesday and then got up today (Thursday) and drove back to Brooklyn. After unpacking and doing laundry and other assorted items, I feel a little pooped. I think I’m going to hop in a bubble bath and then try to start working on my overflowing inbox. Tomorrow, it’s back to managing pain!