Friday, July 22, 2011

Completely not okay


Seriously. It is way too hot. Although I totally deserve this because the Midwest has been having this kind of heat for the last couple of weeks while I've been going on about how nice it's been here with the 80 degree weather and the lack of humidity. 


Now it's so hot that staying outside one more second that I possibly have to makes me feel like killing anyone standing in the way of my air conditioned apartment, which is basically every stupid driver within a three mile radius. 

On a more medically related note, I had a patient yesterday who had a probable yeast infection. It didn't sound like it to me, but she was adamant that it was. The problem was she doesn't want him to do a swab, nor does she want him to even look down there. My attending tells her that the standard practice is to take a vaginal swab and culture it to confirm the diagnosis. The patient decides she wants the medication that treats a yeast infection instead. He tells her that he could prescribe it to her, but if it gets worse and she ends up in the ER, then they're going to do one there, and they're going to be pissed at him for not doing a culture. 

So she turns and looks at me and asks if I can do the swab since I'm female. Obviously I'm a much better actress than I give myself credit for because this woman must not realize that I have no idea what I'm doing! I want to tell her that somedays I can't even get the little plastic covers to stay on the otoscope when I'm trying to look into people's ears. I refrain imparting this bit of information

I, of course, am all for it because that'll be the closest I will get to anything even remotely resembling a procedure all month, but, alas, in the end she decided to just go with empirical antibiotic therapy.

Not that this is even a remotely complicated or dangerous procedure, but still. Two months ago I was sitting on my couch memorizing all the components of MEN syndrome and now the nurse keeps introducing me as "the doctor student," which makes me sound more competent than I truly am.

I think somebody needs to reexamine her priorities if she'd rather have the medical student do anything to her instead of the real doctor. Some guy in an ER once let me suture his face back together after I informed both him and the attending that I had never sutured anything before. I guess I should be glad that these people have some kind of inordinate faith in me because I sure as hell wouldn't. But to each his/her own, I guess.


2 comments:

  1. Wait, you sewed a guys face back together?!

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  2. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!! Glad you're sweating just like a true midwesterner!!! I can't stand when someone else is not as hot as I am. love you too!

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