Hippocrates In San Diego

Additions and Losses

It’s been a whirlwind of a time these last 7-1/2 weeks, with a constant 24-hour cycle of baby care that has kept us poorly rested, poorly fed, and utterly, blindingly happy since January 25. I can’t say I’ve ever had a better experience, despite the frequently desperate and all-consuming fatigue, the frustration when he’s crying for no apparent reason, the inability to get out of the house in under thirty minutes…

Continue reading Additions and Losses…

Pounding Headache

I worked an overnight shift on Wednesday night, 7 pm to 7 am, as part of a new responsibility for our group. We cover our smaller hospital with an attending in-house at night to supervise the residents, provide backup for when they’ve reached their limit of admissions, and to cover the Bone Marrow Transplant patients, which is run in the daytime by the Hematology group. It can be a busy 12 hours, but generally not overwhelmingly so. I often can get a few hours of frequently-interrupted sleep from about 1 to 4 am. Now that the daytime Internal Medicine teams are now staffed by 4 hospitalists instead of 2, the weeks I’ll spend on the daytime service there will be relatively light in comparison. So it’s a trade-off, but a good one, I think.

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Train Jumpin’

I’ve been taking the train to and from work most days since we moved up to North County in May. It’s been a positive experience thus far; not only am I saving quite a bit of money and using far less gas (fillups only come once or twice a month now) but I’ve had more time to read in the last 6 months than I’ve had in the last 6 years. The relaxation time has been the best aspect, though. Despite living in Southern California, I haven’t really dealt with rush hour traffic since I started taking the train. Now, if only California and San Diego County would pay for a more broadly connected, highly integrated, and faster public transportation system, we might actually start to look like a large modern metropolitan area.

The zeal, bravery, and good behavior of the officers and men on the night of June 30, and during July 1, was commendable in the extreme. — John Buford

I’m just finishing another two-week shift at our smaller boutique hospital in the north of the city, covering the final week of the last academic year and the first week of the current year. This is always a challenging time to be on the wards; fresh med school graduates are starting their internships the last week of June so there is a lot of learning happening. And a lot of stress — the interns are stressed, I’m stressed, and the patients are stressed because one day their doctor changes from a confident, knowledgeable and efficient first-year resident to a scared, sheepish, quasi-medical student who suddenly has a long white coat, two new letters after their name, and the power to make serious decisions. If there’s anything I can pass along to you, dear reader, is the advice that you never, ever, EVER get sick enough to require hospital admission around the first of July. The risk of badness happening is several orders of magnitude greater during this tenuous time.

Continue reading The zeal, bravery, and good behavior of the officers and men on the night of June 30, and during July 1, was commendable in the extreme. — John Buford…

Ugh.

I’m still sick. I felt better for a few days and now I am again at the brink of dying. Humans weren’t meant to live like this; I understand now why our ancestors died of infectious diseases so easily, at an early age. It was just too miserable to survive. In other news I’m in the middle of my 2 week shift on service at our downtown hospital. It’s been a joy to work during my last days on earth. Really.

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Update

It’s been quite a while since my last post. The last time I had time to put anything up here, much of San Diego County was still burning. Fortunately the extent of the firestorm was not as broad as expected. The numbers of injuries was far less than we planned for, and luckily the weather changed later in the week. Firefighters continued to contain the fires, and after about a week the Santa Ana winds died out, the temperatures dropped, the humidity increased, and the fires were finally out. A small flare threatened Malibu once again later in the week, but a repeat of the previous week’s disaster was averted when heavy rainstorms passed through Southern California. Since the hot dry period of the firestorm, it’s actually been quite wet and somewhat chilly (San Diego chilly) for the last couple weeks.

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Wild Days and Nights

It has been an interesting 36 hours to say the least. N. and I arrived from Cleveland after the wedding reception hosted by my mom, coming in about midnight on Sunday night. We had an inkling of things to come when, as we approached San Diego from the east, our airplane’s captain announced that some wildfires were visible off to the south. We had heard on the news before leaving about some fires in Malibu, but those would not have been visible from our vantage point. It wasn’t until the next morning that I discovered, after talking to Nicole at work, that San Diego County was dealing with its own wildfires, which were much larger in scope and impact than the ones in Malibu being over-reported by the national press.

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One for the road

Today was your average day, I suppose. I was at work for about 6 or 7 hours, which is a little long for a Saturday on service. After getting home around 3, I took a nap (which is strictly a luxury now that the temperature has returned to normal), then went to dinner at K. and J.’s house with N.. They made some great King Crab legs, in a garlic and herb rub with butter and lemon. I probably could have eaten another pound or two of them but considering my already-obvious eating problems — more food ends up on my face and on the table than in my mouth — I avoided eating more than four legs and added a couple pieces of angel food cake to top off the night. I had two glasses of wine, which was probably more than I should have, but I’m already celebrating being off service for an entire seven weeks (!!). This includes a week of backup where I have to be available by pager. However, essentially I am without much in the way of responsibilities for the next few weeks, as far as work is concerned.

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Lacking Drive

Let me make one thing clear before getting too deeply into this: I love my profession. It is difficult to imagine my life if I hadn’t become a doctor. I think my skills and temperament are well suited to the craft. To top it off, I also probably wouldn’t have met my future wife if I had chosen otherwise. There are days however, when I wish I had chosen a different, more easy-going, less responsible tack in life. Sometimes working in a toll booth or even being a traveling itinerant worker has great appeal. This often happens early after waking or as I drive into work. Clearly I hate mornings.

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Whew!

If you are looking at my posts closely you’ll notice that it’s been quite a while since my last (thanks for the nudge, joe positive). I just finished a 14-day stint on the wards. I’m still surprised how my life continues to revolve around an artifical lunar calendar. As a resident, my assignments always depended on the month. My schedule might have included spending July in the Intensive Care Unit, August on the General Medicine wards, September on the Nephrology consult service, etc. I lived and breathed by the month. This month was hard, that month was cake. I thought that would all come to an end when I finished my residency, when my “normal” life was all set to begin.

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