#453

So here it is, 12:23 AM, and I am lying in bed, blogging and drinking a glass of red wine. I just survived my first ER shift. Tonight I was on the South Side, a.k.a. the fast track area - Strep throat, lacerations, dog bites, etc, etc...Tomorrow I am assigned to the overnight shift on the scarier, sicker side.

It's delicious in bed with my red wine, feeling like a big girl doctor even if I was fairly and consistently miserable tonight at figuring out how to splint, what wrap to use, etc, etc, etc... But the buzzing in my legs from being on my feet all night after an afternoon work-out and a few hours spent running all over the hospital handling a mini-crisis. Okay, that last one is funny: in short order, I managed to drop my ID card down my building's elevator shaft AND miss a meeting with one of the medical school dean's to evaluate the medicine clerkship. Whoops. But that buzzing feeling in my legs, the exhaustion, is so welcome and enjoyable after months and months of boredom, travel, and fast food.

I love being in medicine. How I missed it so. I repeat, I am absolutely terrible at simple things. The staple gun they made to close scalp wounds and surgical incisions, the one that is idiot proof? Well, pardon the egotism here, but tonight was the ninth time I failed at using the stapler and I'm pretty well convinced that it's smarty proof. My panic at placing a finger in a simple metal splint. Ha ha, the nurse just told me splinting is not rocket science. And that was before I splinted the finger only to realize that I had not covered the stitches I had so carefully thrown. Cue the cheesy montage music as you watch me spend the next 15 minutes looking for Kerlex gauze (which was total overkill) and then trauma scissors - twice! - to cut said gauze.

And then there are the victories. We spent the morning in suture lab, diligently cutting pig's feet (dear friends...) and suturing them up. There are so many different types of stitches and so many different uses - simple interrupted, figure of eight, running, vertical mattress, horizontal mattress, corner, baseball, box - and so many different nuggets of useful information (did you know horizontal mattress is the strongest everter of skin?). Would that they were collected in one simple area. And the victory was that from that awkward beginning, I did fairly well with my closure tonight of a right index finger laceration. I always thought I'd be good at suturing, seeing as I do a million different craft projects, but people are scary and the instruments awkward. I think I really like it, though.

I think my biggest weakness continues to be the physical exam. And not looking like a dork. Oh well, there's always tomorrow's overnight shift. Which I am so looking forward to (except for the vomiting and diarrhea part). Today on my million sprints through the hospital, I saw at least four very sick individuals being wheeled from one procedure to the next. And while I felt terrible for these people and their families, all I could think was, Gosh, I love this place.