Consults

They say that board scores are inversely related to social skills, this has actually been proven in several studies. Dermatologists have among the highest board scores because it's a high paying lifestyle specialty and well, many dermatologists just are plain assholes. point being:
today:
attending: Let's get a consult on this rash, I'm not comfortable with it
my chief: Reza, we want you to learn to be an intern, you're gonna practice and get comfortable doing consults, checking labs, all that
me: great, i'm on it.

later on that day... calling the derm consult.

-Hi, I'm Reza from the peds team, I'm calling to ask for a consult.
- Who are you? he replies
-I'm the med student on the peds team
-Why are they having a med student call me? he replies angrily. sounding insulted.
-Well, the intern on the case is sitting next to me, I'm just helping out
-Give the phone to the doctor.

great... never mind I know the patient inside out and I know what's going on. I wanted to say:
listen man, I'm a good student and I know what's going on here and you need to get over yourself and just hear me give you a one minute consult it's not that big a deal, this is a teaching hospital after all and further more, your ass should be thanking me, how often do we even get a derm consult? no one dies from skin diseases, well very rarely do they, and even then we usually get a infectious disease consult because you guys are too wimpy to even handle mrsa most of the time so if anything i'm kinda doing you a favor here and get over your damn self, i mean are you so important in derm land that you can't talk to a student when the bad ass cardiologist can? it's not like you're so stressed out running around not saving lives and popping pimples and prescribing hydrocortisone that you can't at least be polite about it.

but i didn't say that, i just gave the phone to the intern and got ticked off deep down inside and here i'm venting
c'est la vie
the kids gave me some obnoxious cold that everyone in med school seems to be getting.
only 25 days till winter break!

i did it

so last night i went out with a black girl. i tried that once in paris but this man never lets one experience spoil him. i liked her too but i didn't pick up a chemistry between us. we went to a concert, and afterwards i treated her to some hooka during which she started pulling the "i don't date" line on me, when i turned it around on her "do you feel like you're not worth anyone dating?" kind of thing. i think this quickly triggered some defensive reflex in her and next thing i know, we're talking about all her problems and insecurities. by the end of the night, i knew that a second date was well within my grasp. we had mentioned doing something on saturday but i was kind of turned off by her attitude so after we went home, she said "call me if you want to hang out next saturday" and i thought to myself, "not so much" but instead nodded and dubiously replied "ok," but anyways, my point is, she had a ghetto booty and let me tell you, the ghetto booty is way too over idealized. it ain't all that.

Just a wonderful day

I'm on neurology right now which means hours upon hours of "where is the lesion?" my professors are kind of unrelenting.
Pt has a foot drop, where is the lesion?
The common peroneal nerve, it's very vulnerable i repeat
ok... he says, where else could it be?
great.... never mind that we hardly ever ever see it anywhere else, but i take a stab
well, the spinal root
which?
s2-s3 i say
"l1 and l2" a kind intern whispers to me, so i correct myself,
which nerve?
sciatic, oh oh , he 's not nodding, femoral i quickly correct myself,
and on and on and on trying to guess where the fucking lesion is, i'm just ready to lose my mind. a human being can only tolerate so much neuroanatomy in one day. hell, in most med schools, this isn't even a required clerkship.

so my first chief told me i sucked, never mind that she threw me in there with five patients the first week plusp presenting all new patients, making it impossible for me to do well. thank God she left. the next one came in, he was more reasonable, thought i did a great job, circled honors on my eval, and just signed. you could say i was lucky there was a shift in power but that is the nature of this random thing called third year of med school

neurologists are dorks, and i mean that sincerely.even the cool ones. well, a couple of them were cool but if er docs are cowboys and pediatricians are sensitive and family med people are boring, then neurologists are just the class computer dorks, you know, the type that is currently at a coffeeshop near you playing the wonderful world of warcraft or whatever that lame game is called.
thank God i got outpatient assigned to a pediatric neuro unit where the kids keep me busy and the pediatricians have a bit more personality and aren't so concerned about the lesion. "the MRI is the lesion!" as one of my new attendings told me today, now that's an answer i like, a lot, oh, and he has long hair, need i say more?

it looks like my people took the House by storm and most likely the Senate too. that's another thing to be happy about