My resident was explaining EKGs to me tonight, taking advantage of the first slow on-call night we've had since I've been in LA. After several successive calls with over 12 patients admitted, today was a deep breath in the middle of a hectic week. The most exciting thing that happened was our first admit, a large and angry black man who (after questioning whether my residents did anything useful besides paperwork) answered most of our questions with surly and progressively louder "I don't know! It doesn't matter!" exclamations, and who also decided while in the ED that he was hungry, and promptly left against staff instructions, dragging his IV pole and his partially hospital-gown covered bare cheeks behind him to find the cafeteria. The last I heard, security was searching for him. Seriously. I have no idea where he is. I hope he eventually comes back and reclaims his underwear.
Anyway, I digress. I was learning EKGs in prelude to questions I know are coming, courtesy of my attending, who is ever so excited when I have at least one question to ask him about each patient. He likes to know that I am invested and curious, and he's also feeling out his teaching style for students and likes to have conversations stimulated by inquiries. He is very sweet and makes me laugh, like yesterday when he was telling me about a research project he did while in medical school. Apparently, there were large rats that he and his colleagues used for experiments, and he was frankly creeped out by them. "The rats, you see, the rats are very large and I do not like to handle them," he told me in his heavy spanish accent, "but you have to, you know. They are very smart, and so you must caress the rat, yes, caress it like this, and then, yah! You must grab it very quickly! So I got on my big leather gloves, and I was caressing, caressing the rat like so, and then I grabbed it (with a violent motion) and I grabbed it so hard that I damaged one of its lungs. We discovered that when we opened it up later." Horrifying, yes, but ridiculously funny to watch.
The EKG session, though, was the highlight of my day. Compliments from residents are not a daily occurrence for me, and so they mean a great deal. While Ben, my senior, was explaining how to determine results from the strips, I answered one of his questions with clarification from something we'd discussed last week. He laughed, looked at me and exclaimed, "God, that's why I love you! You're just like a sponge. You remember every single thing I teach you." And that's what makes him such a good person to learn with--not only does he rock at teaching clearly and concisely, but he encourages and doesn't make a big deal out of my mistakes. He and Andie are about the best thing I could wish for on this rotation.
3 comments:
Good teachers love questions! Good teachers love questions!
Poor rats. I used to have pet rats.
I am glad you have good teachers and are having interesting experiences.
Just caught up on your blogs. You make me want to be a doctor. It's good to see that you seem to be doing well at work and finding victories. Ben sounds cool. And it's interesting reading your posts. We don't know each other well at all, so it's kind of like reading some random person's blog. But I suppose I feel like I resonate a lot with what you express, and somehow it's nice to think we've at least a couple similarities in background. Such that I can rely on your expressions better, or something. So I'll keep reading, as long as that's all right. Keep growing and healing and learning!
Please do, Chris. It's good to know that even people who are mostly strangers like hearing about my life. I will say, though, that it would have been fun being friends in real-time, but you're more introverted than even I, and it was deucedly difficult even getting you to say "hello" on those random mornings in Brock! But yes. I really like your running stories as well--seeing someone love something helps me begin to love it myself.
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