Sunday, November 25, 2007

Happy Thanksgiving (a bit late)

So I had two days off over Thanksgiving and was lucky my parents made the long drive here to spend it with me. I fixed turkey with all the trimmings and it didn't taste to bad. The rest of the weekend I've been working the 6 pm to 4 am shift in the ER which isn't my favorite but my last shift is tonight. I feel a little anti social not seeing anybody during the day and working all night.

Yesterday I felt like I had a minor breakthrough with a couple of patients. One of the challenges of Pediatrics is dealing with parents who have not very sick children but come to you wanting you to fix every little thing they perceive is wrong with their children. I saw a couple of infants yesterday whose parents came in because their kids have "nasal congestion." Now who, during this time of the year doesn't have congestion??? There was a recent movement to pull all the infant cough and cold medicines off the shelves because of some bad side effects and lack of efficacy. So basically, we can offer absolutely nothing to the parents of those kids. The break through I had yesterday is I walked into the rooms knowing I couldn't give these parents a magic pill to make the kids feel better but instead had the time to just talk and mostly listen to them for awhile. I was thrilled when they actually left happy! I mean you learn that most of the time patients/parents just want you to listen to them but sometimes you feel like people won't be satisfied until you fix their problems. In this case I couldn't do that but all three of these parents seemed pretty satisfied with the time we spent together. Additionally I discovered more information about the patients' home in that the parents all smoke which is going to cause congestion in babies because of the irritation of the smoke. Hopefully I might have made some inroads into getting them to think more seriously about quitting if not for their own but for their kids' sake.

Sunday, November 4, 2007

Weddings, Hit and Run and other news

Above you see a picture of me with a bunch of the residency girls at a fellow resident's wedding. That was the first of two weddings I've been to in the past few weeks. The second was for my former college roommate Beth and was just this past weekend. Have you noticed that my main social events seem to be weddings? I think I've been to five so far this year.

In other news, this weekend I had the unfortunate experience to be a victim of a hit and run car accident. Fortunately no one was hurt but it was a weird experience. I was driving along when the car in the lane to the left of me decided to merge but obviously didn't know I was there and ended up side-swiping my car. When that happened I started to pull over to the right but then noticed that they weren't pulling over, in fact, they were turning left off the road we were traveling on. So I sped up and got their license number. It ended up being just a scratch on the driver's side of my car but I have a feeling the small scratch will end up costing more than I expect. The police were able to figure out who owns the car that hit me so hopefully they have insurance and it will all get taken care of with a minimum of inconvenience.

Finally, my newest favorite song is Easy Silence by the Dixie Chics. It's not actually new but I just sort of discovered it recently. yep, i think the southern influence is taking effect as I'm generally not a fan of country music though have always liked some of the Dixie Chic's music. The song is sappy and romantic but also very pretty. Check it out if get a chance.


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