A whole lot of nothing

I love long weekends. Since I get to make my own schedule this month, I'm sort of off today because I have to work tonight for a couple of hours setting up anesthesia equipment for epidurals and c-sections. It's an externship I took on 1 1/2 years ago for extra money. The main reason for the externship is to get your foot in the door for a residency spot, the money is just a nice incentive, and it definitely comes in handy for groceries, gas, etc. This year it's pretty easy to fit the job into my rotations, but last year was a different story. Since the rotations were all required, I couldn't just take the day off, even if I'd been up all night helping the anesthesia residents. I remember one time last year I'd been up almost all night on medicine call, then the next day I was scheduled for the externship. I ended up going about 40 hours without any sleep. That's a long time for anyone, even a surgery resident. But, you do what you have to do. Hopefully I will match at my school and all the extra work will be worth it. Actually, it was worth it anyway. I learned how to set up arterial lines, hot lines, and set up the equipment. I'll need to know how to do that stuff anyway.

Friday was interesting. A family brought their 4 month old in after he'd had diarrhea for a week. He was barely breathing and pretty unresponsive. None of the nurses could get an IV so the doc had to put an IO in (a needle in the bone marrow space) to give him fluids. One of the pediatric ICU docs came down and intubated (put in a breathing tube) him and put in an IJ (IV in his jugular vein). I've never seen a kid that sick. He almost died. There wasn't a hospital in my city that had any pediatric ICU beds available, so he got mediflighted to a hospital out of town as soon as he was stable. The parents were a real piece of work. They kept disappearing all day and nobody could find them. Mediflight was about to leave but had to wait for the mother, who had disappeared. She finally showed up and they left. Had that been my kid, I would never have left his side. I hope he's okay. I've been thinking about him all weekend.

Now for something a bit less serious and pretty funny. One of the interns was working in the ER that day and we started talking about school and stuff. He doesn't care for the ER much and informed me that he "doesn't do" pelvic exams. I thought that sounded funny coming from a physician who is resting on the bottom of the barrel on the food chain. Me, being the rescuer, told him that if he had any to do, I would do them for him. Why did I say that?! Personally, I don't see what the big deal is with pelvic exams. I don't mind them at all, but why did I feel the need to rescue an intern who is probably 8 years younger than me, for not wanting to do his job?? Okay Dr. Phil, where are you....

So did anyone watch the Superbowl last night? I did. I hadn't planned on it, but my boyfriend and I were craving nachos on Saturday, so we planned on making some Sunday and watching the game. The only ad I liked was the one where the goat was mooning everyone. I thought it was cute. All the other ones were pretty ordinary. The game was okay. I don't really have any emotional tie to either team, so I sort of fell asleep during part of it. The last quarter was pretty good though.

My main goal today is to get home from work in time to watch The Bachelor. Thanks to my residency interview travels, I was lonely and got hooked on it. I've officially stooped to a new level, and I don't think it's up. I am glad that most of the mean girls have been sent home. I can't understand why anyone would get on national TV and behave that way. I don't really understand why anyone would want to be on national TV (or local) anyway. I'm such a private person, I just can't imagine wanting to be on TV. When I worked as a social worker, news reporters were always up at the office doing stories about this and that. I always ducked around the corner or just stayed upstairs when they were around. No good can come out of being the target of a child abuse story!

Enough of my ramblings....