Life has been pretty crazy since last week.
As a parting gift from pediatrics one of the kiddos finally gave me a GI bug. It was minor and I avoided vomiting with some OTC meclizine but it knocked me out for most of the day Friday. I really enjoyed pediatrics, it is challenging in many ways that other areas of medicine are not. In school, we learned a very organized physical exam, typically from head to toe. However, in pediatrics there is no such thing as a head to toe exam. You simply examine the area the patient is presenting to you and work around that. For example, if you walk into a room to a baby that is sleeping, examine the abdomen, heart and lungs first (all the exams that you need the child to not be screaming for so you can hear through the stethoscope), then start moving the baby around and hope you can finish most or all of the exam before you have completely agitated them. Also most peds patients don't have the ability to tell you what they are feeling or do they have the intuition to understand why they maybe feeling the way they are, this can be challenging. As a practitioner when you are treating a child you are also treating their parents, in case you dont understand, that is TWO+ patients per visit. One of the greatest physical exam tools I learned in pediatrics, if a child will not open their mouth to allow you to see their throat, simply stick a tongue blade between their teeth, slowly push it towards their throat and gag them. The gag reflex is strong, if you gag someone they WILL ALWAYS open their mouth. Although I did not enjoy eliciting this in children, it is very effective.
Saturday I packed my belongings into my car and moved down to Pismo Beach. I arrived later in the afternoon just in time to see an amazing sunset. I went to bed early as I was still recovering from the GI stuff and needed to be well rested for the day of work I had ahead. I woke up early Sunday morning, found a local coffee shop near Shell Beach and started the long day of work. All of our assignments for school are currently submitted via mail and must be postmarked by their due date. I had three large assignments due Monday and I had been working on all of them but also procrastinating on all of them.
Yesterday I had my first day of OBGYN. I started the day with hospital orientation, walked into the office around 10:15, met the office staff and Dr. Lickness and off we went. We made three trips to the hospital yesterday in the hopes that twins would be born before 5:00 pm, after two trips to the hospital and two false calls the twin boys were born vaginally at 5:17 and 5:30 pm. It was a crazy and exciting first day!
Day two I saw another baby boy born via Cesarian section and two tubal ligations. My lunch was a sprite that I drank at 2:30 pm simply because the OR was running behind for the second tubal that was scheduled and Sprite was the only item available in the OR lounge.
Although seeing babies born is really exciting, my favorite part of the last two days is seeing a couples reaction the first time they get to hear their baby's heart beat or see their baby on ultrasound. The joy they feel fills the room and has brought me to near tears twice. Although I have been told that my empathy for others will be a challenge for me as a practitioner, I have yet to experience this "challenge" and I am so glad that I have been allowed to share these amazing moments with patients.
"Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around."
- Leo Buscaglia
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