And I'm given, as I have been recently, to thinking about origin stories. They've been cropping up with unpredictable predictability, lately, latecomers to a party that's already well underway, with the guests shuffling around and eating cake and starting to put dishes in the sink, a party that already slipped out of the most covetable trend ( Read more... )

I slept in eight different beds in five different states in ten days in 2010. Tonight I burned the palm of my hand on the chicken pan handle, and then I burned my wrist on the chicken pan lid. I'm in over my head. I'm in my element. I'm out of my tree, and I'm in the wheelhouse. I'm in clinic, I'm in surgery, I'm in pediatrics until April. I' ( Read more... )

We were at Common Roots when Moody told us about her first rural emergency call. She lives in the bottom floor of the on-call house, and so when a call comes, she puts her shoes on and runs. The EMT's in the countryside are minimally trained fast drivers; they just speed like hell to the site and quasi-stabilize the patient and speed like hell ( Read more... )

We were rounding in the telemetry unit, and I was thinking about how nice it was going to be to go home, and K swept back the curtain on Ms. Kohler's* bed. I was pulling on my isolation gown, fumbling for size-small gloves, so I didn't see what he saw, but he said "Heyyy...uh, that's new, isn't it?" I walked around to the foot side of the bed, and ( Read more... )

I passed the boards.

Huh.

After all that? Anticlimax! WHAT DO I DO NOW?!?

Dear Skinny Hipster Boy:

Don't run, so skittish,
across the dark parking lot.
It is not manly.

Dear Ward Patients Who Love Loud TV:

With Fox 9 News on,
I can't hear your heart or lungs.
Do you want to die??

Typing "black" into the iTunes search box yields a surprisingly good playlist.

Currently restructuring my blogging-life, with the kind of compartmentalization that I increasingly need to employ.

Now, need to fill baby éclairs, put on party dress.

Feeling incompetent in most of my activities. Difficulties with studying, aggravated by the sudden appearance of proselytizing schizoid dudes - as if sent out by a central dispatching station - at any sidewalk cafe where I sit down with First Aid, who tell everyone about their amazing million-dollar business plan or the meaning of life; hopeless ( Read more... )

The first thing I learned today, after I'd slammed almost-late in the OR workroom, with my sad, desperately-needed breakfast cereal baggie in hand, at 6 am, to look over the Patient List and the charts of the patients on the List, was that one of our patients had died. Not my patient, but, our patient, sort of. The patient had had a extensive ( Read more... )

At least if Sarah Palin runs for president, it means we'll get a lot more Tina Fey. But who will play Tim Pawlenty? And what will they mock, exactly? Listening to him speechify, I tend to picture him as a prison cellmate who seems kind of normal, and not that interesting, and got there through bouncing checks. But then he shivs you in the back ( Read more... )