Half-Way Through!

This July 1 marked the official half-way point for the med-peds residents in my year! Of course, it's a momentous day by all accounts since all the new interns start, the previous interns are catapulted from a junior position to senior responsibilities, and the 3rd year "categorical" pediatric or medicine residents have a momentary pause as everyone now greets them with "12 months left!" - likewise the fourth year med/peds residents like my roommate Kate.

Before we hit that day, the pediatric and med/peds residents had a retreat day off to themselves to catch our breath. It started with some standard, but pretty funny, team-building exercises. We learned some interesting things, such as that our quietest resident Marte (middle above) was a rugby player in college (!) and Jane (below left) who wants to do clinic medicine because she's not a crises sort of person started out in emergency medicine.


You may also be encouraged to know that if you happen to get stranded with Lena, Marte and myself (above) in Northern Canada in the winter, when your plane crashes and leaves you with a very limited number of supplies - you're very likely to survive according to the special forces Army whiz that put this together. You'll have to build a fire, wear Crisco as face protection and maybe even eat it.... but you'll have good company. (It helps to have lived in Minnesota and met -40 degree weather.)





On the other hand, if you get stuck with this team of Jane, Chris and Zain, your chances are somewhat slimmer. You'll either have to hike 20 miles by compass with a map that is of questionable value since you have no idea from where you started, or you'll die in rapidly after chocolate-whiskey fondue has given you a temporary high, followed by alcohol-induced vasodilation, causing you to rapidly lose all your body heat. Nonetheless, you'll STILL be in good company... :) (They took this defeat with good humor.)



On to more serious things, Drs Javed and Edwards discuss the merits and demerits of private practice vs pediatric hospitalist work.... Dr Javed is our newest neonatologist and the assistant residency director for pediatrics. Dr Edwards heads up the pediatrics hospitalist service.

Dr Schultz - head of the pediatric ambulatory clinic and newborn nursery service - taking in all the banter and commentary on how times have changed!

The Drs Nulty -

the truly delightful husband & wife team that head up our combined internal medicine / pediatric program. They fall into the category of relatively few people who qualify as being both admirable and imitable!

After a session on legal topics (really nice ones like depositions and being called to court), lunch with the attending panel discussion on Life After Residency (closer for some than others!), we headed out bowling.

Only three of our 7 med-peds residence made it this far in the day, but we scored quite well, Randy and Zain (behind me) making up the bulk of the points! I think I came in not-exactly last.

That rounded out June, my month on the floors. It was a tough but interesting month. I directed a team of two juniors and 2-3 medical students. For the medically or encyclopedic minded, our cases ranged from central line sepsis in a baby with congenital nephrotic syndrome (of the FINNISH type, mind you), failure-to-thrive in a baby with caudal agenesis / sacral regression syndrome who wieghed 1kg above her birthweight at 9 months age, to respiratory failure in a little girl with only one patent nostril ("choanal atresia"), a floppy airway and Freeman-Sheldon Syndrome (one of 15-20 described cases world-wide of this musculoskeletal disorder). At one point every child on our team of 12-16 patients had a complication of a syndrome or cancer - no "average" asthma or diarrhea cases! (Those came later.) We also had some great cardiac cases (all repaired with little post-surgical idiosyncracies)- such as transposition of the great vessels, Tetrology of Fallot and hypoplastic left heart. It was like a board review up close & personal all in four weeks... if I'd just gotten to read about everything instead of working madly to keep up with the lab results!

I was pretty tired by the time July 1 rolled around, but it's a great feeling to come through a hard month pretty well. Like a well-run marathon.

At the end of the month, my friend Rebecca (and her baby Sarah) and I hosted a baby-shower for one of our pediatric interns, Morgan...

It was a fun afternoon to indulge the craft & girlish side of the doctors involved!

So lest you worry when I lapse into long silence, there's always two sides to life in residency. :)

July 12, 2009