this morning i began at the (far) west side clinic, which was HUUGE and pretty nice taboot. it was fairly entertaining clinic, lots of upper-middle class white families bringing in their cute and perfectly healthy babies in for well child checks. basically, this means that i play with the baby while my attending and the parent talk. half the time the mom looks my age or slightly older, which makes me feel like my life is slipping away. it's a nice feeling.
we get the noon hour off for lunch, which means i can take about 25 minutes to drive back to my apt, quickly make and devour a lunch in about 15 minutes, and then go to whatever clinic i go to next. nice and relaxing.
this afternoon, i was at the pediatric hematology/oncology clinic. for anyone that has a slight inkling of what i'm interested in (medically), this is it. i was excited. this was an outpatient clinic, so most of these kids were undergoing chemo or were done with it, and were just following up. in other words, these were healthy or going-to-be-healthy kids, for the most part. these are the success stories. and my attending was AWESOME. he was absolutely hilarious. he was able to crack jokes (funny ones, seriously) with the 4 year olds and the 15 year olds, and he even had the parents and myself laughing out loud a few times. very good doctor. after we saw our patients, he said he'd be happy to sit me down and discuss the ins and outs of peds once and what i would need to do in order get a good residency/fellowship. so i'm excited. i've been meaning to secure some sort of peds onc mentor to guide me.
one thing my attending said was that he enjoyed doing the outpatient clinic as a contrast to his inpatient work. the inpatient stuff is all the really sick kids, the kids that just got diagnosed, the kids that are too weak to move because the radiation has sapped the strength from their muscles, and just barely strong enough to allow their immune systems to be ravaged by the chemotherapy. the outpatient side was like his reward -- if he's successful on the inpatient side, eventually he'll see them on the other side. i like that idea.
and in a testament to my academic narcolepsy, when i tried to read the chapter on pediatric oncology in my textbook tonight (believing that i would be able to cruise right through it, relying on my rabid interest in the subject and desire to expand my knowledge base), i failed miserably, consuming nearly 2.5 hours just to stumble through a 35 page chapter.
but it was small print! and no pictures!
what i listen to while lying to myself and believing that i'm actually studying
Brian Wilson presents Smile
Death From Above 1979 - You're a Woman, I'm a Machine
Armand Van Helden - New York: A Mix Odyssey
Saul Williams - Saul Williams
Phil Spector - Back to Mono
Talib Kweli - Beautiful Struggle
Zap Mama - Ancestry in Progress
Takashi Wada - Meguro
now i will go set my alarm clock for 6am.
this educational lesson brought to you by dr. j around 11:28 PM |
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