A word of advice to those of you who are not medical, a well-known truth to those of us who are. Avoid the hospital 4th of July weekend. Your doctors have exactly 3 days of experience (July 1st is the first day of school) and nothing medical happens till next week.
All year I feared July would be chaos…a time during which newbies could make my life a mess, not knowing what they were doing. I was quite wrong. It turns out, I have all of a sudden become a senior(ish) resident with a depth of knowledge that is only apparent via relativity. All those new people have no idea what they are doing. I spent half my day supervising 1/3 the emergency room with junior residents and the other half taking difficult patients, putting in central lines, intubating. So what did I see?
A woman who came in after a seizure who had a massive bleed in her head. A guy with stroke vs endocarditis vs sepsis (no one had any idea). Not much really besides that. A guy with brain injury who has low body salt and was about to seize. The rest were people with arm pains, fluttering chest pains, weird abdominal complaints that all panned out to nothing.
Got out an hr late as usual and met up with Tim, Bartek, and his friends at an Upper West Side party. Apparently, they were all looking forward to some awesome stories about people who blew off their fingers with fireworks. Gun shots. Car crashes. I disappointed. Intubating and central lines are interesting only to other residents.
