Someone Misses Football Already...

Resident: "His hemoglobin A1C was 14 and-"
Attending: "TWO TOUCHDOWNS!"

I Know I Can't!

Cue to the medicine floor at 9pm.
A nurse notes a patient rifling through the refrigerator at the nurse's station, dumping all the juice boxes into a garbage bag she's taken from the trash can in her room. The nurse watches, agape, as the patient finishes cleaning out the entire fridge, then begins dragging her bag o' goodies down the hall. The nurse finally recovers as the patient is about to enter her room (an easy 30 feet away).
Frozen, RN: "Hey! You can't do that!"
Mrs. Frontal Infarcts: "I know I can't!"
The patient then proceeds to drag her prize into the room and shut the door.
End scene.

This story had a happy ending, however. Shortly afterward, a highly-trained team of professionals was assembled, and the hostage juice boxes of 6-South were successfully extracted.

Playa Haters

"Sir, do you know who shot you?"
"A playa hata...please don't let me die, I just love y'all."

Oh, Hey There

Turns out third year is kinda busy as fuck. People say funny shit to me all the time, I just haven't gotten around to posting it. Mostly cause of the, y'know, being busy-as-fuck. Also the drama of being a 20-something with too many hormones and standards that get a little lower every time I see a bitter single female doc (that would be every time I open my eyes).

I recently declared Ob/Gyn. Why? Because I hate happiness. Just kidding...sort of. I'm thinking about residency pretty much anywhere that isn't the Northeast, but hey, who knows. Looked at a lot of the programs in Texas, but seriously, they pronounce it OB-Gin - like the drink - which utterly disgusts me.

Recently saw a patient in clinic who had helpfully written down his prior surgeries for us. I blinked a few times at this one:

Well, sir, I'm sorry to hear that. I hear it's not the size of the boat, but the motion of the ocean, though, so you've got that going for you.

Really?

There's a girl from my home town who's not a lot older than me (I am quite young, thanks) who is pregnant and engaged to the baby daddy. No big deal, there are at least 10-15 other girls that I went through elementary and middle school with that seem to have done the same. If your child is the ringbearer at your wedding, I'm not gonna judge you.

But the thing with this couple is this isn't their first kid. Or their second. This is baby number three and the oldest is 4 or 5, I think. They've been engaged for a while.

I've seen this a couple times on rotations too. Happens with the hood rats and the white trash girls (my peeps). Here's my question: what's the point? I mean...we all know you guys would've gotten married around baby #2 if this was gonna happen. Stop foolin' yourself.

Photographic Evidence

So here's an example of a typical patient encounter nowadays in what I fondly refer to as "Coochie Clinic"

Me: "So what's brought you in to see us?"
Miss Photogenic: "Well I got this heat rash"

She immediately pulls down the 'dress' that is roughly the size of something that I, at 115 pounds less, would wear as a tank top. I get an eye full of cleavage and it takes about three seconds to identify the ringworm.

Me, with full poker face: "Ah, OK, and have you had any other skin problems?"
Miss Photogenic: "Yeah, I had this spider bite about a month ago, here, I gotta picture!"

As I'm thinking to myself, "Oh shit, I know what spider bite is code for," she grabs her smartphone, clicks around, and then shoves it under my nose. Sure enough, there is a picture of her very large breast lifted up by a hand and a huge ass Staph abscess underneath.

Really, people?

Brain Surgery? Easy. Prepositions? Impossible!

I had a patient last week with a skull fracture. I was reading through his chart during pre-rounds when I noticed something odd on the Neurosurgery note.  I would've taken a picture, but I'm just a timid med student and don't want to get yelled at [more]:

"Reason for operation: Surgery for fix skull"

I shit you not. I expected that from ortho, but neurosugery?

Terrible Two's?

Whoever thinks two is the hardest age has clearly never tried to bear wrestle an equally contrary but far more strong three-year-old down in order to look in their ears.

Finito

So I survived Step 1 (well, I've made it like 12 hours since it ended, so my chances are looking good).

It proved what I already suspected: the extent of my medical knowledge is only eclipsed by...the extent of things I don't know about medicine.

That's my way of saying I don't know jack shit.

Anyway, it's over and I probably did OK. I mean, I feel like I failed massively, but I think that's normal. I felt that way during all my practice questions sets and I was really doing OK. I find out in about a month, and I think until then I will just repress all thoughts of the exam (oh, excuse me Step 1, I mean suppress).

Now on to clerkships. I start with Pediatrics, which is a terrifying thing because:
1) Kids are petri dishes- my stomach just cramped thinking about the fun viruses I am likely to pick up
2) I'm afraid I will accidentally break the little ones, somehow
3) Screaming baby otoscopic exams

Should be an experience. In the meantime I'm taking a vacation to Asia! Yeah, bitches. And I'm not going to think about medicine at all!

Step 1 Made Me Racist

Studying for Step 1 has made me a buzzword-recognizing machine. My brain is like a little medical landmine - one of those crappy, homemade ones - that gets tripped every time I hear something that sounds remotely like a buzzword.

"Blah blah blah roses," old lady at a table near me says, and suddenly my mind is full of Homer-Wright pseudorosettes, medulloblastoma, and neuroblastoma (oh my!). Some dude in the other window chair says, "Yada yada writing," and things like HLA-B27 and "can't see, can't pee, can't climb a tree" bounce around in my head.

Buzzwords aside, Step 1 studying has also made me TOTALLY racist (and ageist and sexist).

Every black person has either sickle cell or HIV. If you're a black woman, you definitely have sarcoidosis (in fact, as far as I can tell, the only reason to EVER do a CXR on a black woman is to see bilateral hilar lymphadenopathy).

If you're a young whitish female and you fell down? You have MS.
Teenage female with a bad attitude? Acute intermitten porphyria.
The right side of your heart is mentioned at all? IV drug user.
Mediterranean anything? G6PD deficiency. (And lay off those fava beans.)
White kid with a respiratory infection? CF, bitches.
Acting an aggressive fool, even if you're an old dude? PCP.

And I assure you, there is a pretty good chance that it is lupus.