since my own memory is probably not functioning up to snuff, let's go in reverse chronological order.
my family was in town this weekend. we did a lot of stuff that mostly revolved around eating.
they came in on saturday afternoon, and we immediately hoofed it to k-town and dined at kum gang san, which made us smell like kalbi for the rest of the day (a sweet delicious aroma). then i took the crew to pinkberry for dessert, which blew everyone's minds because janice had read so much about it and it was low-cal and low-sugar so it was ok for my mom and we watched some dude suck down the large pinkberry bucket of froyo all by himself in record time. then an employee made my dad put away his camera because there were no photos allowed.
neeext we went to times square, where we watched an afternoon matinee of THE HOST (the korean campy monster movie) which was pretty fun and exciting even though my dad fell asleep, but my mom loved it and actually understood most of it, since it was in korean. the theater, by the way, had a million stories and we went up a million escalators to get to our screen. fyi.
then we went to chinatown for dinner, and slurped down soup dumplings at joe's shanghai (where i'd never been, but heard much about, and o lordy, thems some good xiaolongbao). i also ordered the braised pork shoulder, which was about 25% fat and gristle. but that remaining 75% was delicious, brother.
afterwards we had very loose plans to go out, but considering the idiot quotient in the city (being St. Patrick's day and all), and our caloric quotient (since we had only paused the eating for 2 hours to watch a movie), we are all pretty pooped, and called it for the evening.
on day 2, we had breakfast at the little cafe metro that was right next door to my family's hotel. then my parents took us all to st. patrick's cathedral for sunday services, since they realized that they would be the only way they'd get us all together to do such a thing. i'm not sure when the last time i went was (since i was on call on christmas last year), and jennie was pretty sure it had been years since she's been. but hey, it's st. patrick's cathedral on st. patrick's day. and i'm technically still a catholic, so why not? it was surreal though.
next we dined on noodles at hyo dong gak, a chinese/korean noodle house near k-town (more korean food!), and then purchased discounted tickets (i mean, TKTS) to Mamma Mia! on broadway. then to kill time i brought the field trip to soho where we did a spot of shopping (everyone oohed and aahed at uniqlo. also, everyone used the restroom at uniqlo) and then returned back to times square for the show.
i've only seen one broadway show before and it was the lion king and it expanded my mind. it was freaking unbelievably amazing and i'd go see it every week if tickets didn't cost $120. so i expected a similarly mind-bending experience with Mamma Mia!. i knew nothing about it except that it was all ABBA songs and probably about a wedding since all the ads have a woman in a bridal gown.
OMG it was such a chick flick musical (jennie's words). a story of 3 women who grew up strong and single in the 70s and now one of them has a daughter who's getting married, but oh no, we don't know who the father is, because 20 years ago the mom had summer trysts with THREE DIFFERENT SEXY MAN BEASTS (one american, one brit, one aussie). also the whole thing takes place on a sexy greek island.
it was done well but it was no lion king. highly recommended if you're 40 and female and reuniting with the sorority sisters for cosmos and a NIGHT IN THE CITY! WOOOOO
so that was the weekend.
prior to that i took the USMLE step 3 exam. it was misery. i don't want to talk about it. ok i'll talk a little about it. it's 2 days long. the 1st day i came out feeling confident because i finished like 2 hours early. the 2nd day was painful. there was some error with the computer system so the 8am test didn't actually start until about 10:15am, and they warned us that they might have to reschedule us (and my family was flying in the next day). then as i was taking the test it seemed so much harder than the day before and i think i might have failed. it was horrible. won't get the scores for weeks.
prior to that i was on night float for 2 weeks. now THAT's misery. it's a long shift, 5:30p-8am, factor in the commute and it's about 15.5 hours everyday. if you do the math, that leaves you 8.5 hours to sleep, assuming you fall asleep the second you walk into your apartment. factor in more time to maybe eat a little something, check some emails, make some phone calls, take a shower, and you're left with NOT MUCH TIME TO SLEEP. and the one day i decided to do laundry was a bad idea - that cut into my sleep margin by almost 2 hours.
night float was a difficult rotation. as everyone leaves to go home, they sign out their patients to me, the idea being that if any shit went down, i'd be there to take care of it. so it's common courtesy for people to wrap up as much work as reasonably possible during the day, and leave me with NTD (nothing to do), which is what is "supposed" to happen.
of course, if you have a sick or crashing patient, then inevitably there will be lots to do but that's a given, and the daytime MDs should try to set things up to go as smoothly as possible overnight (i.e., "if the BP does this, then give this med. if that doesn't work then add this med. and if that doesn't work then call this consultant, they are already aware of the patient"). that's the least stressful way to do it. the worst is when there's a really sick patient and i'm told "oh he's fine, nothing to do" and THEN he craps out after they leave. then i have to run and get the chart, read about the patient, try to make a decision on how to act, if i'm stumped i can call my senior (who is busy admitting patients in the ER overnight), and decide if i need to call a consultant or not. and then i hope that whatever intervention i decide on works.
some nights went better than others. and some of my colleagues give much better signouts than others. nightfloat is a way to really see what all your co-workers are like. when you work with them during the day, it's hard to tell, because you all work side by side, but independently of each other. so if my buddy is doing a crap job, i might not be able to notice, because it doesn't affect MY work directly. but if he's doing a crap job, i'll DEFINITELY find out overnight, because all the loose ends that he leaves hanging at the end of the day will be my mess to clean up overnight. there are some classic violations like IV lines that are just barely hanging out that the interns will try to duck out of, telling me that there's nothing to do, then high-tailing out of the hospital, and then not even 5 minutes later i'll get called that i need to place an IV. and i don't MIND placing lines and such, but it just sucks when your night starts off with several of those calls, all because people don't want to do their own work.
then there are the calls from family. it sucks when the family insists to speak to a doctor because the daytime MDs haven't told them anything. and then at 645pm, when all that's there is me, the guy that's covering 80 patients overnight, and they want ME to tell them what exactly is wrong with grandpa and what tests do we have planned for tomorrow and how come nobody has called his cardiologist and are we sending him to a nursing home? and so i read the chart and try to decipher handwriting and figure out what exactly the primary team thinks is the diagnosis and where they're going with it, and then regurgitate that info to the family. lots of times i had to deal with family members who are angry at what happened during the day (i.e., when i'm NOT THERE and have NOTHING TO DO WITH WHAT'S GOING ON), and so they take it out on me. one family yelled at me repeatedly over the course of a night because they weren't allowed to stay past visiting hours and wanted to speak to a supervisor (who's not there at 1am) and they said a nurse said such and such to them and she's a bad nurse (she's not) and one of the doctors earlier promised them this and that and none of it happened (i didn't make those promises!) and because of all this, they want to remove their ventilated vegetable mother from our hospital and take her home at 1am - a horrible idea. so i have to go there and calm them and remind them that i'm not the enemy and that pulling their mother is a terrible idea and they should just let her stay the night and re-address the issues in the morning. and after a couple of hours of berating me, they agreed.
blech. anyway i'm on vacation now. not going anywhere too fancy, heading to philadelphia this weekend (it's jennie's birthday). looking for an apartment to live in (east village). gotta get my tax return filed, pronto. and then: 3 months left in internship. halle-freaking-lujah.
this educational lesson brought to you by dr. j around 2:03 PM |
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