Surviving the Petri Dish

Yay! My ER month is over. It was really cool and inspired many a' ponderings:

1. It's impossible to work more than two 12-hour shifts in a row without getting sick! I bet I'm colonized with a nice variety of bugs now... luckily they're the "upper" kind and not the "lower" kind.

2. Completely well children in the ER are really fun to see, despite the trees killed to meet their paperwork requirements.

3. Completely well children who listen to people's bottoms with stethoscopes cause they're not tall enough to reach your lungs are even more fun!

4. Teaching med students how to suture is AWESOME. I feel so useful now! Want me to suture you??

5. When you pick up a chart, and it says "vaginal bleeder" it's ok to put the chart back and walk away slowly. You can even use the speculums in self defense!

6. Working nights is kind of strange, because halfway through at midnight you have to switch the dates. So, when I'm there during days I start switching the date at noon which stirs up all kinds of trouble. Although, it makes time move twice as fast. :-)

7. Splinting is totally cool and fuels the part of me that always wanted to do Ortho. (I think it's a small part. Can we splint and cast brains?)

8. All ER attendings are crazy. I think you really kind of have to be, and admittedly some are crazy in more endearing ways than others. My favorite is the attending who writes "Stop using Drugs or You'll DIE!!!"on her discharge papers for kids who come in with drug overdoses. She'll underline the "DIE!!" too, and write it really big. And under the 'home meds' section she'll put "None-- you have already had too much!"

9. This same attending did a throat swab on me after I asked her how to do one. Good thing I didn't ask for a refresher on a Gonococcal/ Chlamydia probe...

10. Mia Bella's (off Lexington and Shepard) has half priced drinks and appetizers all day Wednesday and free dessert coupons on Citysearch.com. AND the food is delish! This doesn't have so much to do with the ER, but it's my new favorite restaurant in Houston! MMM!

I'd like to thank my asthmatic patients on the Hermann floors for once again allowing me to update my blog. I can't really sleep since I have to check on two of them every hour or so, so this is great. I will miss not having call, but it's nice being back here... these kids are so cute! One patient who looked like the girl from little miss sunshine kept making pooping noises at me. (She really wanted to poop because she hadn't in a while.) And another toddler who had two butt abscesses drained was still running around her room laughing.

Bye bye pregnant teenagers! :-)