Just got out of my 24 hour on call shift and thought I'd update everyone quick before I head off!
I started working in the outpatient clinic this week. Depending on the doctor working the clinic on any given day, there is more or less for me to do with patients. Luckily, the consultants had their consultation hours running parallel.
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| Urology can now also be found on Level 02 |
We also had two new girls doing electives this week. I played mom a bit for one of them making sure she saw as much as possible while she was in our department for one week. My days were spent between jumping in on some consultations, showing the girl around and doing some translation work.
Wednesday was a bit of a tough day. I'm still getting up before work every morning to study. And while this isn't effecting my mood substantially and I am surprised at how happy I am in general, I am still constantly under a certain level of stress making me a bit more prone to decompensating. I went in with the doctor to see a patient. He talked to the man and his daughter, gave the man the shot he came for and then left to let me do the ultrasound (rather standard procedure). Well, then the daughter started asking me about what dimensions a kidney should have. When I tried to explain to her that we don't generally concern ourselves with the exact dimensions of the kidney but rather look at the kidney's structure, she interrupted telling me she was from the medical field and that she would know that already.....well then why the heck did you ask?! So she became increasing difficult and then sprung the question on me if her dad was getting his prostate checked. Now, I have no issue with checking prostates but I usually ask when it was last done because there are more or less intervals in which it should be done. Her basically deaf father and she talked concurrently about how the prostate should be checked and this doctor said this and that doctor said that. When I told her I didn't know her fathers complete history and that the intervals are a bit dependent of the patients history, she yelled at me that I should know her dad's complete history since its all in the files (You are absolutely right, for your fathers outpatient appointment for a shot, I certainly intensely reviewed his 20 year urological appointment history in our department. Would you like to know his blood pressure from March 10th 1986?). She continued to yell at me that every doctor said something else and that we should know what we are talking about...blah blah blah! At some point I interrupted her and told her that it was not feasible to fulfill her vision of knowledge and even less considering I've been in INTERN in the department for merely a few WEEKS and the she could use a substantially nicer tone! And then I walked out. I told the doctor about the situation and then went to the bathroom. I just made it in time to the last stall to bawl my eyes out. I couldn't believe how mean she was to me. I was just there to help and would have discussed everything in a calm manner had she approached me in such a way but to just let out all her frustration with life on me was too much. I stayed in the stall for about 15 minutes until I couldn't cry anymore and tried to freshen up and hide the evidence. I was paged and asked where I was since there was a patient for me to see. I washed my face with cold water, put on some lip gloss and headed back to the outpatient department. The rest of the day was fine but this lady's inhumane treatment really irked me for a few more hours.
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| Urologist also have our own exit (and apparently use too much Viagra) |
Nothing all to exciting happened Thursday and Friday.
Yesterday (Saturday), I started my 24 hour shift. We had quite a bit to do. There were patients on the ward that needed us, the emergency room called almost every hour with a different case for us (mostly renal colic or infections). We also had to place renal fistulas as an emergency again (luckily this time it wasn't in the middle of the night). I did get 5 hours of sleep in all though. It was busy but interesting.
Today I leave to Frankfurt so that I can fly away tomorrow morning! Where to? Cape Town, South Africa!!!!!!!! I haven't really had it sink in yet since I've been so extremely busy with other stuff but since a few hours, I've been getting more and more excited! Of course I'll report a bit about my time there next week!
And as a last little thing for you all to try out (because its yummy!). I've been making this ginger-lemon-honey drink daily the past week. I wasn't going to risk getting sick! And like I said, its delicious!
-cut slices of ginger and pour over with hot water and let it stand over night
-1 fresh pressed lemon
-1 tablespoon honey
-some mint or lemon balm leaves for color
-mix it all together and enjoy while your colleagues think you brought a mojito to work ;)
Enjoy and stay healthy!
V
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