Next Steps

This is my last week in Pediatrics. Colon. Beginning Parenthesis.

I had a generally good experience. I think, in practice, a lot of my cohorts had a good experience with this third 'big three' (Medicine, Surgery, Pediatrics) rotation. By virtue of having done the other two, and having 4 months of experience under one's belt, I think we all tended to fail less often. Good for us.

Plus, babies is cute.

Next, I'm headed off to Ob/Gyn - so I am practicing my diction to avoid any confusion. Med-i-cal student. Not 'Midwife Student'. Or 'Janitor'. I hear the hours are going to suck. I have good feelings about January being a month where all the babies are born from 9-5 though. It could happen...


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Tempus Fugit

Medicine. Surgery. Pediatrics.

It is exactly six months ago that I took Step One, and started this whole... thing. You've got to be careful not to spook yourself by looking at the big picture too often. As a rule, I find it's better to just keep marching, putting one foot in front of the other and getting up to fight a new fight every day. But I've come a damn long way in six months. Good for me. Good for all of us.

I really have learned a ton about doctoring, which I assume will come in handy when I work as a doctor. I'm certainly not there yet, but I'm a whole lot less lost lately than when I started out. I've managed to break myself of raising my hand to ask permission to use the bathroom, for example.

Anyway, as we come up on Winter Break, I think it's valuable to take a moment and reflect on how far we've come. Or at least, reflect on the fact that, "We don't have to go through that emmer-effer again."


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Rout

I'm a Wisconsinite. I like the Packers. It makes me happy when they win. They won today.

And yet, while I am happy, there's also a sense of ennui. Had I been a Raiders fan, I might have turned off the TV in disgust. And certainly I wasn't going to stop watching the Packers win, but it seemed appropriate to start doing other things during. So it became more of a background game. With side bets. For example, will they more than triple the spread?


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New!!!

More dispatches from the grocery store, unfortunately. I guess pediatrics is giving me too much time to live freely on the outside. Anyways...

My roommates tend to flock toward bizarre, novel delivery options in food. For example, they wouldn't buy a Little Debbie cupcake, but some 'new and improved' ice cream cupcake that you store at room temperature and is exactly the same would be snapped up immediately from the end of the isle. 'Pancake in a Pouch', 'Maple Syrup Flavored Go-Gurt', 'Soda in a Ham' - all would be sought-after items.


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Jagged Little Marketing

OTC medicine advertising is dumb. I recently had occasion to purchase a bottle of Tylenol. All I want is some acetaminophen, allocated into proper doses, and covered with a little bit of coating so that it doesn't get murdered by my digestive system before some of it can be absorbed. Between brand names and generics, the grocery store literally had about 20 riffs on this simple theme. Every single superficial change you can make to this drug has been done, and then put in brightly colored letters on the box.

Guess what? "Extra strength" just means you take one capsule instead of two. "New formula" means that they added some orange food coloring to your NyQuil. "Dual action" doesn't mean anything outside the 'Not-Quite-Perfect' Glock Outlet Store.

So anyway, I went with the one that has two colors. Why would I pick plain white? If it works, it's probably good enough to paint with food coloring.


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Jumping the Shark

I remember the old times, when you jumped in the car, went places, and afterward were rewarded for your compliance. It was a simpler time, when life was more about he acquisition and deployment of stickers.

I really don't get it anymore. I mean, these kids have the internet, and yet they still seem to be pretty dead-set on a sticker-based reward system. It can't just be the brightly colored image - I mean, those are everywhere. My YouTube has 1080p. I don't know what that means precisely, but the image is damn good. So I'm left to conclude that the appeal of stickers must be in the overall stickiness - which is possible, as this is one of the prominent textures in pediatrics.

Anyway, as in all childrens' doctors' offices, we have rubbermaid baskets of stickers to choose from. In the processes of 'helping a child pick a sticker' (which is a mixture of building rapport and policing the process to make sure the kid doesn't just take 30) you often get asked certain questions, usually of the form, "Who's this?" I still know some of the characters - an Elmo is still an Elmo. But I'm pretty sure we have some unsanctioned stickers with nameless characters meant to look like they're from a Disney film that the child hasn't seen yet. I'm pretty sure that's what this guy was, but then again, I do watch way less Cartoon Network than I used to...


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Once More Unto the Breach

I was a diligent studier during my outpatient month; I've got my pediatrics questions from the UWorld squared away. High averages on those puppies, by the way. Very demoralizing. Anyway, if you know to give vitamin A for rubella, there's two free ones for you right there. Congratulations.

But now I'm going to have to start waking up again. Inpatient starts at 6am in some undisclosed location. These next few weeks are going to get rather dark - hopefully I'll manage to see some sunlight out a window or something.


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