Wow, I’ve got the day off, it’s sunday. It’s almost felt like a whole weekend off, because yesterday, after call I didn’t go to sleep. Instead, I went to the first annual “Tour de Tykes” mountain bike race to raise money for our local children’s hosptial. One of my friend organized the entire event, and [...]
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1) You’ll notice that many of my post titles are song or book titles, or a line from a song. The first person who can email me (atkinson AT alumni DOT pitt DOT edu) with each post and tell me who the artist/author is will receive special mention in my next post! Some titles thus [...]
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An interesting first-hand account of Malaria at medical weblog Feet First. I must return to the unit now, it’s almost midnight, and I’ll be up till morning. My migraine isn’t quite gone, but it’s a little better. Hopefully the night is quiet.
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I’m exhausted. The long nights with little sleep are catching up to me. Everyday I feel more and more like a doctor here. I feel more comfortable with crises and procedures here in the unit. Today I did my first procedure under fluoroscopic guidance. Fluoroscopy is like a continuous x-ray in real time. We had [...]
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Remember the man I mentioned about 2 weeks ago who had swerved to avoid a deer and ended up hitting a tree? A week later, he came to the hospital with encephalitis that we initially thought was related to an undiagnosed skull fracture. Later, the neurologists decided that it was coincidental, and that his encephalitis [...]
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We had an overdose admission today. For some reason, I really like overdoses. An overdose patient arrivng in the unit has usually already been stabilized to some degree, and presents a good opportunity to learn about their particular ingestion. Today, it was Seroquel, an antidepressant. We looked up the management of Seroquel overdoses in our [...]
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An elderly man, who was quite active in his retirement fell off of a ladder about 10 feet up. He landed on his side and broke several ribs and ended up with what’s called a “flail chest”. When he breaths in, the flail segment sank inward, and when he exhaled, it puffed outward, disconnected from [...]
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Only five days left in the unit and two call nights. Between now and then, there is a picnic for the new interns, a mountain bike race that I’m not in shape to enter, a bike parade that I could easily enter, and a day off. I’ve been spending far too much time playing with [...]
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Well, it’s about 11pm and time for me to lie down for my 2-3 hour nap tonight. We split the night up on call so each of us gets a couple hours of sleep. Today was a busy day, with three new admissions, three transfers out of the unit, one death, and several procedures…swan catheter, [...]
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Click here for original photo from Amish Photo dot Com A simultaneous arrival the other night with the race car driver was a young Amish man injured in a barn raising. Sixty men besides him were raising a beam into position, when his head got trapped between an existing beam behind him, and the one [...]
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