Update

I'm finally back. Somehow this blog got lost with everything life required of me. Where shall I begin? Well, I updated the heading. I'm no longer a wide-eyed 1st year medical student naive in wanting to "restore" health and practice the "art" of medicine. Medicine is not pretty. Nor do we make patients "brand-new." It is messy, at times unorganized, bloody, and tiring. Working with residents who hate their lives doesn't help either. Occasionally, I will have a moment where I know it is all worth it.

The other day -as all my stories begin -I had a young girl come in to the hospital for a rule out appendicitis. My residents, easily seeing the Surgeon written all over my face, thought it cute to have me take care of this patient. I was immediately put on the spot. I went in to see her. I performed the best history & physical I had ever done; presented the patient to my attending; wrote orders. I consulted Surgery and spoke to the on-call surgeon over the phone. I then saw the patient with him.

The surgery resident didn't believe the girl had appendicitis. I agreed based on his history. But from my detailed history, this girl had a classic case of appendicitis, which later ruptured, and now has peri-appendiceal inflammation or perhaps an abscess. He somewhat dismissed it when I told him this, but suggested we get an abdominal CT if we really thought she might have an abscess. He wasn't too convinced that this girl had anything more than "constipation" and walked off.

My patient's labs started to trickle back. It became apparent that this was NOT "constipation." I called the surgery resident right then and there. He now seemed to agree with me and suggested I call radiology to rush the CT scan. I ran everywhere just to get a radiology number that worked. Even the number the operator gave me went unanswered. After finally reaching someone in Radiology, I met the technician and took the p.o. contrast off her hands. I then found myself walking down the halls back to my patient with a super-sized cup of Gastroview mixed with orange juice.

After my patient had slowly finished it all, my part was done. Radiology would call her in 60-90 minutes to image her. The night team would handle it from there. I explained everything to her and her mom. I acknowledged that her feeling scared was natural, told her the rest of the doctors would take care of her, and said goodbye. I could see both were very gracious to have had me manage their care, especially my patient's mother.

As I made my goodbyes to everyone at clinic, I received strong compliments from the nursing staff, residents, and attendings. I had really only done what I was supposed to. Perhaps they were just amazed with the speed at which my patient was already on her way to getting a CT scan. In any case, it was getting late. Next problem - what to eat for dinner?