Survived a quarter of my internship year, and I’m celebrating by going back to Taiwan for 10 days! Ok so maybe my brother getting married is the catalyst, but whatever. My schedule is packed already. Sleep, eat, rinse and repeat… whew it’s gonna be tiring. Maybe I’ll put up some pics of my trip, if I ever figure out how to do it.
I was outted the other day by my patient…
As part of a complete history and physical, I have to ask certain questions to assess of certain risks (esp with county patients)
"Are you sexually active?"
"What?"
At this point, I should probably give some background info. This male patient was being admitted to the renal ward at county for chest pain at 3am. You can imagine both him and me were very grumpy. Back to our conversation.
"Are you sexually active, " I asked again.
"Yes, what does that have to do with anything."
"It’s standard questions I ask all patients I admit. It’s part of the H&P." At this point, I just knew he was going to love the next question.
"With men or women?"
"WHAT? Women! With women and only women. Never men, so don’t get your hopes up."
Needless to say, that was the end of that H&P.
Reporter: "Your first weekend off in 12 weeks, what are you going to do now?"
Me: "I’m going to Disneyland!"
And I’m turning 30 soon.
But hell, I had a blast (see picture).
Because they own the hospitals, especially County. Doctors? We exist to do their biddings, and they don’t take no for an answer. I found that out today.
So, there is this patient. Not my patient per se, but patient of another team that I’m covering for at night. Let’s call him Dumbass (btw, that’s pronounced Doo-Maas). So Dumbass has been intubated and out of it for pretty much 10 days, but even when he was intubated, he had a strong desire to go home. Luck has it that he gets extubated on my last day on call for ICU. I get paged (that has gotten REALLY OLD by now). Patient’s family wants to talk to me. They tell me that patient is acting strange, not making sense, etc. in front of Dumbass. I tell them, go outside and let me talk to Dumbass alone. I talk to him. He knows his name is Dumbass. He knows the year, month, date, where he is, and who the president is. I’m beginning to think the family is crazy (that’s a whole other rant). I tell the family that he is prefectly lucid, I cannot keep him in the hospital against his will. People have rights, etc. etc. Meanwhile, nurses are telling me that the patient is wanting to leave and that we need to restrain him. Ummm, it was a free country the last time I checked, right? Anyway, I manage to convince Dumbass to stay in the hospital for one more day, at least until I’m off duty. Middle of the night, nurse pages me, "Dumbass is getting restless, he’s trying to get up." "I’ll be right there." I go and calm Dumbass down. Nurse tells me, "He needs to be restrained." I tell her no, he is capable of making his own decisions, he is not mentally incapacitated. This happens at least 2 more times over the night. Same thing, Dumbass getting restless, nurses want to tie him to the bed, I say no and calm him down. Few hours go by of silence, I figure he’s finally either asleep or gave up. I’m making my rounds of patients and guess what, Dumbass is tied to the bed. We’re not talking about regular 2 points restraints to both wrists here; he looks like Hannible Lecter in Silence of the Lamb minus the face mask. And on the front of his chart is a restraint order filled out by the nurse, with the physician signature box circled. At that point, Dumbass’ primary team is here, I’ll let them know. My fellow physician tells the nurse to take off the restraints. Our team finishes our rounds, I’m finishing my work in the room, Dumbass is still hog-tied to the bed. What the hell? I call Dumbass’ doc and let him know that I’m taking off the restraints. He says fine. I take the restraints off and shit hits the fan. Nurses go nuts, telling me that I cannot take off restraints, I have to write the order for nurse to do it, I’m violating hospital policy, I’ll be responsible for anything that happens, blah blah blah. I pretty much get written up by the nursing manager for what I did, but she was sooooo kind to not report me to my attending/department. La-de-fucking-da. Moral of the story: forget being a doctor, go be a nurse. You’ll get more respect.
Epilogue
Sadly, Dumbass completely justifies the nurses restraining him by promptly getting out of bed and falling on his face/knees/ass/whatever. sigh. REAL moral of the story: forget being a doctor, these Dumbass patients aren’t worth it.
I love my job
Just as I suspected, this blog is being neglected. Well, what can I do. I’m on-call every 4 days, which means I spend 1.5 days at the hospital, 0.5 days to recover, and 2 normal working day before I start the cycle all over again. Wow, what a life I lead. I’m too tired to even rant about my usual shit. And I had sooooo much to say too, about reality TV, rubber-neckers, minivan drivers, etc. Too tired… post call… gonna pass ou…….zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz……….
Survived my first week at county. 2 overnight calls, 10 admits, 5 gallons of coffee, and 1 paracentesis later, I emerged bruised and definitely battered. Today is my first day off, and I celebrated with brunch, a little shopping and a movie with my Pebbles (not you Lawrence). This working thing sucks dude. But anyway, here’s the top ten lessons learned at county.
10. It’s hard to act professional at 3 am
9. If a patient looks sick, he/she probably is
8. The healthiest looking patients will give you the most troubles at 3 am
7. Coffee is good
6. Energy drinks are even better
5. Both of those will keep you awake because they make you have to pee every 5 minutes
4. Being referred to as "doctor" is a trip
3. Having to return a page and id-ing yourself as "doctor" is a trip
2. Having to return pages all night is not much of a trip, even if you do get to say "This is doctor…"
1. County workers… that’s all I have to say
So I was at the LA county human resources department the other day to get fingerprinted (hope they didn’t find out about those felonies I have) for my new job. I was helped by this really nice 40-something Caucasian woman, with bleached-blonde hair, inch-thick make-up, and bright ruby red lipstick. I filled out the form, standard questions like name, birthday, place of birth, and she’s making small talk. I handed her the form and she looks it over as she’s operating the lifescan machine.
"Taiwan… that’s China right?"
"Yeah, close enough…" I didn’t want to get into a political debate.
"Oh, I just wanted to make sure, you know…"
OK… maybe she’s just sensitive to world politics, being a county worker and all. She continues to make small talk about how my fingers look like they’d be easy to scan, unlike the little Asian girl or the plumber with dirty fingers she had earlier today. And she asked what kind of intern I’m gonna be, blah blah blah. All of a sudden…
"You must be pretty smart, huh?"
(long pause, uncomfortable silence. What a random question… I wasn’t sure if it even warranted an answer. Maybe I heard her wrong) "…Excuse me?"
"Oh, your race, I mean."
(Kaboooooom, the sound of my mind being blown away) She did not just say that, did she? My jaw literally dropped to the floor. Luckily, she was looking at the machine, still typing away like she didn’t just drop a race bomb in my lap. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know if I should be offended, upset, laugh, cry, whatever. I think my response was "I guess…" She went on to elaborate further, observing how in my race, the parents are more strict and therefore the children are smarter, etc., and she topped it off with "not like us white people, haha." I don’t remember the rest of the conversation, cuz all I can think about is what she and the many other people she fingerprints must talk about. What does she say to a Black person? "You must be very athletic?"
What a wonderful world we live in…
Bought my first CD in probably 6-7 years today.
My high school buddy told me about Vienna Teng.
"Do you remember so-and-so? Yeah, well, she’s got a couple of CDs out there."
"What??"
She was a friend of ours in high school. Really cool girl, incredibly talented. I guess I underestimated her talent. I checked out some of her music on her site and I was impressed. She reminds me of Vannesa Carlton (the girl with the video where she plays piano on the back of a flatbed), except she doesn’t sound like she’s 12. If you like that kind of music, check out Vienna’s site for some samples. Gotta support my fellow Falcon.
What are you doing reading this? Didn’t I tell you not to read? Fools… Well, it’s too late, now you must listen to me vent about a huge pet peeve of mine: bad drivers. Oh where do I start…
1) Tailgaters. Okay, so I might not be driving 90 all the time. Well, sometimes there are cars in front of me that prevent me from driving my normal speed too (see #2). Tailgating me doesn’t make that car 50 feet in front of me go any faster. If you think I drive too slow, go around and go polk your street.
2) Slow ass drivers. Dude, fast lane means faaaaaaaaast. NOT 65, NOT even 70. Hell if you are not the fastest car around you, you do NOT belong in the leftmost lane. Get off your cellphone (see #3) and get a clue.
3) Cellphone addicts. Ok, I talk on the phone in the car too… and I have been know to not pay attention, rarely, while on the phone. Come to think of it… scratch this one
3 for real) Clueless drivers. This is a broad catagory, and many many people fit in here and will forever be stuck in here. Why? There are just certain unwritten etique of the road that some people will never understand. For example, if you see a car merging into the freeway, do one of following things: a) speed up, b) slow down, or c) change lanes. Don’t friggin maintain the exact speed that will cause you to end up in the same little piece of highway that the merging car will when it merges. Worse yet, don’t change your speed to BE in that exact little piece of highway that the merging car will be. As difficult as this sounds, you’d be surprised how many cars did that to me on the road to and from the bay. No surprise, one of these drivers was on her cellphone (and she was female… hehehe)
(deep breath… exhale) ok, I feel much better.
I’m in SF with Pebbles (NOT Lawrence). We packed our vacation so full of activities that I seriously need a vacation from my vacation… I hate tourists…
