April - the cruelest month

It has been pointed out to me that I have been slacking on my blogging this Month. As it stands, it's been a rough month for me rotation-wise. April Fool's day I started on call. I knew it wasn't going to be easy when the first words I hear walking into the resident call room, back into the cruel time-suck of inpatient life was, "Hey! You wanna do an admit?"

Let me talk about pediatrics for a moment. Kids are great. About half the time the kids I round on are adorable. The other half of the time their are either too sick, too scared, or too old to be fun. Rounding on an angry teenager is about as much fun as rounding on a 2 year old who kicks and bites when you try to listen to his lungs. However, I'd take the angry teen over the biting terrors... most days.

That said, I enjoy the patients much more on pediatrics. They actually get better when you treat them. Their parents are another issue that I won't get into here. Adult patients can be hard on the soul - sick, multiple problems, unmotivated to change, blaming the health care system for not fixing their diabetes, threatening to sue when they can't leave the ICU to go have a cigarette... kids just don't do that.

The attendings we round with are mostly awesome. They do a lot of teaching and, with a few exceptions, are fun to work with. The problem is, we get a new one every 3-4 days. So, while I am rounding for 46 days, that means more than a dozen attending change-overs. Every fourth day or so it's like the first day all over and we have new expectations, new rules, and new ways of doing things. In medicine you learn quickly to adapt to this kind of thing. Attending A likes to see the medical students give a teaching nugget with every new case, Attending B likes to do entire bedside rounds, presenting the patient in front of the patient and the whole family, Attending C likes to play devils advocate and question everything, Attending D takes forever to round, Attending E is fast, Attending F wants all our notes and discharges done before 9 AM... so on and so forth.

Plus, pediatrics is classically the rotation where work hours are routinely violated. It's pretty much impossible to work only 80 hours a week with the kind of work needed to manage the pediatric service, all the patients, parents, calls and not to mention clinic.

So that's my big fat excuse.

Fun things that happened in April:
Honkfest West was a HUGE highlight for me. I played a my trumpet all weekend and thoroughly enjoyed myself. Most everyone has heard about it by now. I hope to blog about it but it may have literally been too cool for words. I also went to the Tulip Festival north of Seattle (not too cool for words but pretty amazing nonetheless). And Shilo turned 20 (see right)! Those things pretty much cover my fun adventures for the month of April. I wish I could wax poetic about all the fun things as much as I did pediatrics but my time is up. April ends in just a few short hours and tomorrow herald a long day for me. Some other amazing things happened to me this month.... but I have to leave a little mystery, don't I?