This was my perfect first group, Medicine Team C! My resident, Micky, always tried not to scut us out too much, helped me look like a star when I had to present to our attending, Dr. Leaventhal, and was always trying to make it a good experience for us, all while being friendly and encouraging, even while we were pulling out hair out on the odd day when one intern or the other was out ON VACATION!!!! He was all for letting us do procedures, and as a going away present, he was going to let me put in a Dobhoff tube, although I actually chickened out on that one seeing as my intern had never done one herself, and I wanted the patient still talking to me the two more days I was going to see her! Both me and Natasha did so many rectals apparently she was asked to teach another student, although I was regarded as the "resident expert" - apparent when one day at breakfast Micky said, "Another rectal? Let butt boy do it, he's the expert!" He also tried not to ever keep us too late, and on call days we'd always hear, "What are you still doing here?? GO HOME!"
My intern Seema was a pleasure to be around, even when - or especially when - she was frustrated as hell and would sit around yelling, "Ridiculous! Ridiculous, I tell you!!" all the while making funny faces. She taught me how to write SOAP notes, discharges, and transfers, and was all about teaching me how to do procedures. One time she came down from the 4th floor to the lecture hall, came into lecture, and woke me up, all so I could get a chance to learn how to do ABGs while we still had a patient too weak to run away! What a pal! She even made me keep trying until I got it! (which thankfully, was the third time and the patient hadn't lost too much blood...) I grumbled when she made me research small bowel obstruction, and then the next day I got pimped on it by the Chief Resident in front of a bunch of medical students and high school students and I looked great!! She was patient, had a hysterical sense of humor, and took all my needling and abuse without yelling at me - although now that I think about it, she had me doing so many rectal exams I was known on the 5th floor as "RE," a name I continue to protest because I've done even more blood draws than rectals, and yet the name continues to stick. It's a mystery, but I suspect Seema is behind this...
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A Day I'll remember: Seema assigned me a patient who'd come in the night before having had a seizure, and was catatonic. The next morning I went in, the patient was unresponsive, like last night, and I started doing a physical on her. Halfway through, when I was doing the abdominal exam, she woke up and said, "What are you doing?" in a garbled sleepy voice. Naturally I thought, "Holy s**t, she's talking!" I took an excellent subjective assessment, noted she was still weak on the right side, and as I walked out, I remembered, "Hey, stroke patient, I should do an assessment of her orientation." She didn't know where she was. She didn't know what month it was. However she DID know her name, because she gave it to me twice, once when I asked, and again when I repeated my question because she was giving me the WRONG NAME. Yup, they had discharged my patient the night before and replaced her with ANOTHER stroke patient. The woman was also white instead of black. I quietly sneaked out and didn't go back to that floor for days.
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