Monday, October 04, 2004

If My Aunt Had Balls She’d Be My Uncle

I know I’ve been kind of slow with the blogging recently but it’s mostly because of my overall exhaustion. As you know, last week was really difficult. I was finished with the first CCU rotation of the year and started my rotation on the medicine floors. I figured I would take this opportunity to update everyone on the current ongoings inside the Medical Madhouse.

My Team: As I previously outlined, my team is made up of one Attending, Resident (me), two Interns, one Sub-I, and two Students (check prior posts for further explanation of goals). I’ve been with them for almost one week so far and have slowly developed into a team leader. A highly indecisive, paranoid, self-conscious team kind of leader (I guess…). One of the Interns is from that amazing medical school from Boston, the big H, rhymes with “Harvard”. The Sub-I is from the big-D in NC, rhymes with “Luke”. Every day as we round I try to teach the students a little something. Every time, these other two try to chime in with one of their New England Journal facts. I think next time on call I will ask the admitting resident for a patient who needs emergency dis-impaction. A little present from the big R (that’s for "your RESIDENT") for being way too smart!

My Attending: As luck would have it my Attending this month is one of the Giants. Known for his total disregard of conventional medicine and an odd view of the way we do things. He likes to discharge patients, specifically, patients with life threatening conditions. Over the last week I’ve admitted multiple patients just to see them go home the following morning. Great for Intern, as Intern’s mission is auto-accomplished and no lying necessary, but bad for Student and Resident as I now have to work harder to teach.
Last night, I admitted a patient who’s suddenly started vomiting at 6 o’clock in the morning. I was pretty sure during the night that this woman had a small bowel obstruction and that her condition was somewhat severe. This morning, Attending convinced me that this is in fact Not Small Bowel Obstruction. His explanation: “If my Aunt had balls she’d be my Uncle”. Considering his standing as one of the Giants, I am thoroughly convinced that this in fact is pure genius. I just haven’t figured it out yet. I’m sure that with a little more sleep deprivation things will begin to make sense.

Chief Of Medicine (from here on “COMMISH”): In my last post, I touched on how the Commish embarrassed Resident MaDmAn in front of everyone and questioned the MaDmAn’s commitment to hard work and excellent patient care. I had trouble sleeping that night. Considering, I really took it kind of hard. It was really surprising how Commish got into Resident head. So bad, that during that evening Resident had achieved total failure in bedroom with wife because Commish’s face kept popping into Resident head. Thus achieving failure in multiple aspects of life. Came to work the next day kind of cranky (you think?).
I was determined to do an absolutely fantastic job of admitting last night and presenting this morning and I believe that I did. Commish had no great comments, but at least no bad ones either. MaDmAn junior is back. “Oh honey…?”

By the way…if anyone figured out that “My Aunt had Balls thing” feel free to clear this up for me.