The lounge

I did forget to mention the one improvement I have contributed to the lounge. I stuck a random picture of bisphosphonate related osteonecrosis similar to this on the bulletin board right above the lunch table. This is a totally rare and irrelevant disorder as EM is concerned, but the pic is so nasty I had to hang it.

Christmas Muzak

The Muzak that is piped into our floors, much like in the house of god is noramally very annoying, but it was even more so this christmas. For one thing, it had been turned off for nearly six months after the "Highway to Hell" by ACDC was playing overhead during a nasty ED code. When they did turn it back on it was christmas music. When the same christmas songs are looped through an average of 4 times during the course of a 12 hour internal medicine shift, it can be very annoying, to say the least. It starts to be very depressing as well. Particularly when you see a 90 yr old parkinsonian gomer lying in bed, Q sign on face, staring at the ceiling, and twitching, seeminly to the beat of deck the halls.

The residency lounge update

I went in to work early this am to find a neatly made mattress lying on the floor, its frame shattered into a shambles. The vandals strike again!!

Resident Lounge

The lounge, as I have said, has been a special project for my friend Cade. Now he has had his set backs, but, he has done a great deal to improve it. Miss Ann Thrope, and others have put time into making the place feel more comfortable and home like as well. Now, Darshita, one of the new first year residents has decided to take a collection to put in a video gaming system. Everyone has agreed and it sounds like a great idea. I have refused to contribute the first red penny, even after Darshita had to inform everyone that the price per person would be rising just because I was the one person who would not pitch in. I feel like Yossarian when he refused to contribute to the building of the officer's club. "Actually there were many officer's clubs that Yossarian had not helped to build, but he was proudest of the one on Pianosa. It was a sturdy and complex monument to his powers of determination. Yossarian never went there to help until it was finished; then he went there often, so pleased was he with the fine, large, rambling shingled building. It was truly a splendid structure, and Yossarian throbbed with a mighty sense of accomplishment each time he gazed at it and reflected that none ofthe work that had gone into it was his. " Actually, as my residency experience drags on, I begin to relate to Yossarian, trapped on Pianosa, more and more. And I see the awful similarities between the military beurocracy described in the book and the sphere of academic medicine. I think the infamous hang up is actually written into our own by laws somewhere, or evrywhere. At least nobody is trying to kill me, at least that I know of.

The Penis Surprise

I Gave a lecture today, and as a policy I always try to sneak a Nasty Penis picture into every presentation. I always spring it when people least suspect, like right in the middle of a series of slides depicting all the images of the FAST exam. This picture of circumate balanitis (for those who wish to know) was the one I snuck in today. Just as I moved from ACute mountain sickness with High Altitude Pulmanary Edema and transitioned to High Altitude Cerebral Edema, I flashed the picture. I should start offering bonus points for the first person to name the various penis pathologies.

The Hiney shot

A patient told me today they had had a fever ever since they recieved the hiney shot. The hiney shot? I thought about this a second and realized they meant the H1N1 shot!

Unintended consequences of Swine Flu Scare

So much morbidity and mortality has been incured from the swine flu scare itself, probably more so than from the actuall flu. All this hospital overcrowding and resultant medical errors and increased infections and complications, etc. Then the scare has caused a shortage in the seasonal flu vaccine as well. my 90 yr old grandparents have been unable to get a dose of seasonal flu vaccine because of this. And I don't even want to get into all the costs we have racked up during this scare.