but i performed a lumbar puncture today. that's a spinal tap to all you laypeople/christopher guest fans.

i heard germany won the best match of the tournament so far.

i waited 45 minutes for the chief resident to finish lecturing the night float interns before i could do my 2 minute-long signout.

i got home too tired to go to tv on the radio.

i'm leaving brooklyn tomorrow at 10am. i will be a bronx resident by lunchtime.

tomorrow i begin overnight call around 3pm. 5 admits. it will hurt.

this educational lesson brought to you by dr. j around 8:59 PM |

today was my short call day.

this means that i come in at 6am, pick up an overnight admission and have it worked up by 7am. then i do work rounds until 8am. then i round with the resident. at 9:15am we round with the attending. this is supposed to last til 11:15am. then you resume work. from 12:15-1pm, there is usually a noon conference with lunch served - this has been cancelled for the first few days so the interns have time to adjust. then you finish your work and sign out to night float by 5pm. then you go live your life.

so what REALLY happened was:

wake up at 3:45am. out the door and on the brooklyn train platform by 4:30am, hoping to get in a bit before 6am so i can have a cushion of extra time to work up my admission. i sweat it out in a shirt and tie in a humid and stagnant station and the train doesn't arrive until 5:05am. i get on and after a few stops realize that this 4 train isn't running express. i don't know if it's because the 4 runs local before 5:30am or something, or if i picked the wrong train, or maybe i was on the 6 (shout out to j.lo!) the entire time and didn't know it. so i actually arrived at 6:15am.

got my admission, get sign out from night float, immediately start getting pages. finally see the new patient at 6:30am. not really paying attention to time very well, and being very inefficient overall, i work on the admission until about 7:45am. then i realize i need to see the other 7 patients before 8am.

that obviously doesn't happen.

look like an ass in front of my resident (and later, my attending), because i haven't had enough time to check up labs and see all my patients - but the 3rd and 4th year student have all their data. i feel like an idiot.

attending rounds just kind of dissolves on the floor about 11am or so for some reason. we all separate and resume work. i have 8 patients on my board.

and then, somehow, i start to get the hang of it a little bit. the nurses are tough but all of them are super nice (and all of them think they're making the "OHHHHHHHH DOCTOR OHHHHHhhHHHHhhhH" joke for the very first time. some of them repeated the joke from yesterday) and they seem to like me, which is a plus. something happens. i start feeling a bit more confident. i spend a bit more time going over my orders and the patient's vitals and labs and my pager screams a bit less. i end up discharging 3 patients, gearing up 1 for discharge tomorrow, and one for a transfer. that would leave me with 3 patients (right now i'm sitting with 5).

so i didn't eat lunch again today, but i got a lot done, and signed out an hour earlier than yesterday (actually since i got in an hour early, i guess that works itself out).

tomorrow is my "pre-call" day (since i'm on overnight on saturday), so i will not be taking admissions! nice! and i'll be sending off 2 of my 5 patients. TECHNICALLY i'm supposed to be done by 3pm on fri pre-call, and it really seems like i might be able to pull it off. definitely NOT eating lunch tomorrow.

tomorrow night tv on the radio is playing in prospect park. i can't wait to pass out in the grass before they start playing and lull me to sleep with their throbbing basslines and peter-gabriel-on-heroin melodies. that's not hate, i totally feel TVOTR, but i've been averaging 4 hours of sleep a night, so i'm just sayin.

saturday morning i will move in to my apartment in the bronx (thus eliminating the million-year commute) and live out of bags and on an aerobed for a week. saturday 3pm i go in and work overnight until sunday 3pm (i get 5 admissions). monday the whole thing starts all over again.

still don't remember a damn thing about medicine. but i'm getting the hang of working the system, which is really what this is all about, anyway. see you in brooklyn.

this educational lesson brought to you by dr. j around 9:05 PM |

the long awaited first day of residency.

i had to be in at 7am. so i woke up in brooklyn at 4:30am and left the apt by 5:20am. it was pouring. my pants were soaked up to mid-thigh (even though i had an umbrella, apparently those don't stop SIDEWAYS RAIN). i got to my station and it was closed. so i doubled back and took a different entrance. then i waited 15 minutes (it seemed like eternity) with wet legs for the 4 train. i rode with the sleepy people until nearly the end of the line, and made it into the medicine conference room about 10 minutes before our scheduled 7am start time. i drank two dixie cup things of black coffee and ate a blueberry minimuffin. i was too anxious to eat too much.

i met the intern who was on his way out. it was his last day, off to another hospital for his ER residency. ("so how was the year?" "are you kidding me? don't fool yourself into thinking it's anything but tough.") he was on call last night, so i got slammed with his 5 brand new admits on top of his established patient list (my co-intern had 4 patients total). they gave us until 8am to walk around, meet the patients, say hi, maybe get the "S" (subjective) part of the SOAP note done (that's the progress note we write daily). needless to say i spent most of that time relearned where everything was and how to log on to the computer based orders system.

by 8am we were to recongregate in the conference room for a 1 hour intern crash course orientation. my pager blew up about 4 times during that orientation. i couldn't listen to how to survive because i was answering pages. incredible. the novelty wore off in like a second. although it was fun hearing nurses refer to me as "doctor".

at 9am we had attending rounds, which is where we meet with the senior-most physician on the service, and discuss our plans with him. since i had no clue what was going on, the former intern did most of the talking. these rounds tend to last a while, but today's rounds last a painful 4 hours. this is the nightmare of internal medicine. ROUNDING ALL FUCKING DAY. (there is no rounding in anesthesia)

so i didn't get much done by 1pm. now, after answering all these pages and calling for consults and just trying to figure things out, i had to go see patients and drop in notes on everyone. but not all the patients are in their rooms (some are off to radiology, some are off to physical therapy, etc), not all consults have been called, not all the blood has been drawn (i drew 2 bloods today and 1 blood culture), not all the labs have been sent, not all the radiology has been read, etc...

by the time i figured out what i was doing (to a point) and how to do it (for now), it was 7:30pm and time to sign out.

by 8pm i was out the door. 9:15pm i was back in brooklyn. 9:30pm i had dinner (my first meal of the day - had no time for lunch). 10:30pm i am writing this thing for your enjoyment.

tomorrow i need to be in at 6am for my short call admission. this means waking up at 3:45am to be on a train by 4:30am. so if i passed out instantly, that would be about 5 hours sleep.

also i feel very stupid like i remember ZERO medicine.

and that was my first day.

this educational lesson brought to you by dr. j around 10:27 PM |

aw i'm depressed because the korean team has to go home.

this educational lesson brought to you by dr. j around 4:57 PM |

This should be killer.

this educational lesson brought to you by dr. j around 2:57 PM |

in the past 4 days..

approximate length of time spent on subway, per day: 3hrs

average number of rides on subway, per day: 4

number of times i ate at an asian restaurant in the city: 2

number of restaurants with the same name (on the same block) in st. mark's place that i went into before figuring out that rodbard was in the third one: 2

number of times i wore sandals on the subway: 1 (i learned my lesson)

number of times gone shopping: 0

number of pictures taken: 0 (the camera done brokeded)

number of questions i got right in pubquiz: at least 2 (the answers were iceland, and joe vs. the volcano)

number of questions i got wrong in pubquiz: at least 1 (mcgregor is gwen stefani's kid's SECOND MIDDLE name, not first name)

number of falafel sandwiches consumed: 2

number of hot dogs consumed: 1

number of japanese beers consumed: 4

number of MSTRKRFT DJ sets attended: 0.5

number of dollars spent to see aforementioned set at a surprisingly swank and pleasantly climate-controlled venue: 7

number of free MSTRKRFT t-shirts acquired (courtesy of Puma): 1

number of times i've hung out with Rory: 1

number of World Cup Team Korea matches viewed: 1 (soon to be 2)

number of World Cup matches viewed, total: at least 4

number of World Cup matches viewed in the waiting room of a hospital in the bronx since that was the only place we could find a television: 0.5

number of times i've used the Treo to get live score updates on the World Cup: countless

number of people i've spoken to that were surprised by the US loss to Ghana: 0

number of nights i received less than 5 hours of sleep: 3

number of buck ass naked men seen on the E train at 2am: 1

average temperature in NYC: one million degrees

this educational lesson brought to you by dr. j around 2:10 PM |

I am posting to my blog via text msg! Hooray! This is much better than stressing out about what i'm going to do about moving in... I'm hungry.

this educational lesson brought to you by dr. j around 6:27 PM |

so i've suffered through 3 long days of orientation. so long and painful and pretty boring. i want to yell at some of these incoming interns, "JUST BECAUSE YOU ASK A MILLION QUESTIONS DOESNT MEAN ITS GOING TO GET EASIER".

so where do i begin? remember my moving fiasco? so far my move-in date is set for july 1. so i got everything sorted, and now it seems i can re-rent and re-load a u-haul truck on july 1 and move in.

EXCEPT that we got our schedules today and i'm on call (overnight) on july 1. that is a saturday. so i lose my sat and my sun. now the interesting thing is, before the weekend overnight call, i get to leave early on friday (early being 3pm), and i don't start on saturday until 3pm. so that gives me a very odd pocket of time in which i may be able to move... except the friday is still one day before my official move-in date.

ALSO, i met one of my fellow interns (who hails from california) who is living in the exact same building i will be living in, who was able to move in THE FIRST DAY OF ORIENTATION! and she knows of another intern who was able to move in THE WEEK BEFORE! WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK! i called that fucking housing office so many times to ask if i could move in early to no avail.

so i called them again today to ask if there was any chance, they said the apartment i've been assigned is scheduled to move out on june 30. i asked if there was any chance they'd move out early and basically got yelled at for suggesting that they kick out their tenants early (totally NOT what i suggested), and so i asked if they might move out a day or two early, the lady said MAYBE, and that they'd call me if they did - i won't hold my breath for that one.

SOOOooo my best case scenario seems to be if they let me move in ONE DAY EARLY, and then i can leave work on fri early at 3pm, go straight to u-haul, and with the assistance of hired help (which will cost me about $200-300 more than i have planned) move in quickly that evening. worst case scenario is trying to do the same on saturday morning, before i go in for an overnight shift, on the same day that EVERYBODY will be moving into housing (not to mention the fact that i'd be commuting from brooklyn at like 5am to get there.. how the hell i'd stay up all night is beyond me). medium case scenario is do all of this mess on sunday after i get off the overnight shift.

BASICALLY THIS IS GIVING ME A FUCKING HEADACHE AND I AM TIRED OF THINKING ABOUT IT AND AM JUST A LITTLE BIT IRRITATED THAT I HAVE NOT ONLY NOT RECEIVED ANY HELP FROM MY PROGRAM, BUT THEY ARE MAKING IT EVEN HARDER FOR ME TO GET THIS SORTED.

but let's see, more news.

i got my pager.

i got my id.

i got my rotation schedule.. i have vacation the first half of october and the last half of march. i will be working the medical floors during thanksgiving, christmas, new year's, and easter. i suppose it's possible i'll get a day off here or there, but right now, it looks like i won't be going back to wisconsin for any holidays anytime soon.

also we learned that during our elective month (normally a "free nights and weekends" month at most institutions), they are adding on 2 ER shifts on the weekends and a clinic shift or something and something where we come in on the weekend which basically means you don't get all your weekends off that month either.

also we learned that the "free food" we were promised is actually not as such. we get $15 a day for food. but not in an expense account. in meal tickets. $3.50 for breakfast, $5.75 each for lunch and dinner. and they are labeled, "breakfast" "lunch" and "dinner". and you can only use each ticket during those meal hours. NOT EVEN JOKING. and you can not combine tickets. and the cafeteria closes at 7pm and there is NOTHING in the hospital overnight. also none of the coffee stands open before 7am either (they recommend arriving before 7am on a regular day). so much for free food.

yes, it's intern year, yes it's supposed to be terrible, but fuck man, i didn't think i would be this disillusioned already. i'm already telling myself "it's just one year" and then i get to move into the city.. isn't it too early to be thinking those thoughts?

this educational lesson brought to you by dr. j around 6:03 PM |

just trying to see if I can post from my phone...

this educational lesson brought to you by dr. j around 9:34 AM |

They light up when they bounce!

this educational lesson brought to you by dr. j around 2:38 PM |

Just testing out the photoblogging capabilities of this new phone. Nice.

this educational lesson brought to you by dr. j around 5:53 PM |

ok, tomorrow we are waking up super duper early and going to try to hit the road as early as possible, meaning 7am in all reality.

that means i have less than 24 hours left in wisconsin. less than 24 hours left in the midwest. less than 24 hours left in CST. i have lived in wisconsin for the past 22 (nearly 23) years. i have lived in madison for the past 9 years. it has been quite the experience.

the car done got sold. the marshall head and amp done got sold (and cot damn it cost a pretty penny to ship that cab, boy i tell ya).

i am very excited to make NYC my new home. i am excited to live in brooklyn for the first 2 weeks even though that means my commute to my hospital will be painful. i am excited to not have to have a car and not stress about the price of gas (cue music). i am TOTES X-CITES for the KOREA v FRANCE match on sunday. i am excited and nervous and terrified to begin residency. i am curious as to if my name will be embroidered on my white coat. i am still getting used to the fact that one of my magazine subscriptions has now begun arriving addressed to me with a prefix of DR and a suffix of MD (ok its a medical journal but still).

i have a whole lot of shit in a uhaul truck, and that's after getting rid of just about all my furniture. i kept my bed and frame, one chair, a piece of shit folding table (because it folded into a small size), and i think that's it. everything else is clothes and music and guitars and one tv and a couple or four speakers and one receiver and computer stuff and books and stuff and "other stuff." also i have a box of ramen.

looking around my parent's place, it's weird to think that everything i own right now is either in the uhaul truck, or in two duffel bags in my bedroom.

and i've upgraded my phone to a treo. so now i can check email and read the WWB while on the road. not sure if i can do blog posts from it, but if i can, be prepared for some residency life hilarity, sure to be coming in the next couple of 4 years.

goodbye wisconsin, it was a good run.

this educational lesson brought to you by dr. j around 5:29 PM |

Air Force 1, World Cup Team Korea edition

yeah, i'm thinkin about it.

here's the play by play, by the minute, of the match.

this educational lesson brought to you by dr. j around 12:15 PM |

lots of stuff to do. lots of packing up to do. moving on saturday. goodbye wisconsin.

japan just floated in a pretty questionable goal on australia. this is going to be quite the controversial goal for this opening round, i can tell. USA plays their first match today. korea plays tomorrow. matty, we're going to be watching lots of world cup.

liz, i saw the men's french open championship - totally thought federer was going to pull that one out and take it into a new set. totally thought wrong.

gonna cop out with another bullet point list:

the music blogging thing looks like it's already collapsed. i'm just too busy right now. dang.

just got back from mexico - it was nice and warm, i'm nice and brown. no montezuma's revenge - nice and solid and well-formed, OH YEAH!

i just sold half of my marshall half-stack. the amp head just got sold in hours on ebay (someone decided to BUY IT NOW), the cab has been languishing on there for the past day.

thinking about using the proceeds to buy myself a new phone. or maybe a new PDA for intern year. or maybe a new camera to replace my dead one. or maybe a new ipod. or maybe the deposit on my housing.

the car will be sold on wednesday. i have a buyer for it and he's got a cashier's check and we're all set. the plan is to drive up to madison and sell it, then rent the uhaul truck, fill it with whatever's left in madison (most importantly, my bed), clean the apartment. then drive that back to beloit, fill it, then drive that bitch to the bronx.

just found out that my elective month is in august. damnit! so early! i think this means i'll have weekends off so i will prob have my birthday off though. still don't know what my elective is, though. originally i requested anesthesiology, but that's too early in the year for them. so now i'm asking for radiology.

you know, elective in august isn't so bad. i can go to a lot of shows on the weekends. i think.

um... so that's about it right now. i should really start boxing some of this shit up.

this educational lesson brought to you by dr. j around 9:20 AM |