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June 27, 2007
"How many times you poke me?" she asked. Then, in her heavily accented English, "Dr. Better never took this long for LP. Five minutes, always."
I made empathetic noises, apologized a few times, and tried to focus on the needle I was moving in and out of her back. I'd done four lumbar punctures…
June 22, 2007
Signout has a new banner today. You might not have noticed--all that's missing is a couple of words, after all. I nevertheless ask you to regard their absence with some intention, as the missing words are, "first-year." That's right, children. Signout is a senior resident.
I'm not one of those…
June 19, 2007
Huzzah! The winner of SEED Magazine's Threadless t-shirt contest has been announced. Finally.
You wear, you like!
June 18, 2007
The other night, we had three trauma cases come into the pediatric emergency department, almost at the same time. The first to arrive was a boy who'd collapsed and stopped breathing after being hit in the head with a ball during his prep school's baseball practice. Then, in quick succession, came…
June 15, 2007
Today, I want to tell you about puppies. And chocolate cake. And violets! All things we can agree we love, and discussion of which never generates a hostile environment.
The thing I like best about puppies is how kickable they are. Just kidding! Oh my God, you people are so sensitive.
I've been…
June 6, 2007
The chief complaint listed next to her name was, "wants to know if she is pregnant." At first, it didn't seem like she wanted to know that badly--she barely looked up from her cell phone when I walked into the room for the first time. She answered questions the way fifteen-year-olds often do--…
May 28, 2007
The other day, while I was carefully loosening a perfect oyster from its bearings, a good friend said to me, "Signout, your blog rocks my world. However, what is up with--if you'll excuse the expression--all the mental masturbation?" (Quite the wordsmith, this friend.) "You should use your blog to…
May 24, 2007
While I was knee-deep in frozen river water the other day, someone said to me, "Your blog is great, but you hate men too much."
Bollocks! I love men! It's the patriarchy I hate. Please regard this entry, one of my personal favorites. Does it not demonstrate my sensitivity to the position of the…
May 21, 2007
Someone told me at a wine-tasting the other night that this blog is "good, but really depressing."
Depressing, my eye! This blog is all sweetness and light. Just behold this entry from my first month of residency; the last thing it makes me want to do is jump off a bridge…
May 18, 2007
In my second month of internship, when I was a brand new intern on the medicine floors, I took care of a very sick man with a complicated family dynamic. I knew at the time that this made it unpleasant and difficult to take care of him--so much so that I wrote about it here. I remember thinking, "…
May 10, 2007
I was recently asked by Blog, MD to weigh in on how I'd spend the $456 billion that has so far been spent on the U.S. military effort in Iraq if, by some terrible error, I were made Queen of the World. This is a difficult question for me because the only items of whose cost I am sure these days are…
May 2, 2007
It seems that my clinical activities this month have been assigned a theme: "cognitively disabled people who reproduce." Themes like this do not exactly renew one's faith in freedom of choice; after providing care to three developmentally delayed mother-child pairs over the last month, I feel that…
April 26, 2007
Lately, I seem to be having a bit of the writer's block. Yes, I'm still working, and yes, crazy things continue to happen on the job. It just feels as though it's been a while since I had a meaningful reaction to a patient or colleague interaction. I'm a little tired of feeling other people's pain…
April 16, 2007
It was a pretty simple story: their 3-year old had had fever and lethargy for three days. She was fussier than usual, but consolable. On the second day of the fever, her cautious doctor had done some blood tests and an x-ray, and although neither confirmed a bacterial infection, he'd started…
April 9, 2007
A couple of weeks ago, a study appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine showing that patients admitted to hospitals with heart attacks on weekends had higher mortality than similar patients admitted on weekdays. The investigators' analysis demonstrated that the main reason for this was a…
April 8, 2007
Blog-a-rama:
Today's Pediatric Grand Rounds is up at the blog of the ever-inspiring and insightful Dr. Flea.
Additionally, Change of Shift is up at the marvelous Emergiblog.
April 8, 2007
It was street, y'all.
Team Phylogenetics came out busting chops, with a
and a
"Your mom," said HIV:
"She's so fat,"
Team Phylo sputtered.
"I thought we were brothers, man:"
"Oh yeah?"
"Booyah, biatch."
And as quickly as it had started, the game was over.
HIV moves on to the next round.
April 6, 2007
I'd ask Atul Gawande why he blogs.
However, 1) he doesn't blog, and 2) he's already answered, sort of. (Scroll down to the bottom of the second page, unless you want to read the boring details of a parathyroidectomy, or something.)
April 5, 2007
My fellow Scibling (cute, huh?) Bora is an incredibly friendly, warm, and funny blogger. He's also incredibly proficient: in addition to blogging at A Blog around the Clock, he's put together an anthology of science blogging, and a freaking conference of science bloggers. The man has the energy of…
April 2, 2007
Not half an hour ago, post-call after an exhausting night in our cardiac care unit, I stopped in at the residency program office to pick up my mail. At the top of the stack was an envelope with a familiar name in the return address--the name of a man I had taken care of while on a general medicine…
March 28, 2007
For the past week and change, ScienceBlogs has been nerdily (and happily) hosting the Science Spring Showdown. It is Signout's distinct honor to host the Sweet Sixteen match-up between HIV and Phylogenetics. (Please see the SSS Press Center for details of previous rounds' results.)
As a…
March 24, 2007
The first phone call came about a month ago, on a day I wasn't in clinic. The phone nurse had left me a message: Rosie's mother wants to know why she keeps turning in circles."
I had never met the 10-year-old Rosie, but looking through her old records, I found that she has a non-specific kind of…
March 24, 2007
This week's Change of Shift, a collection of nurse blogging, is up at codeblog.
March 21, 2007
Yesterday, I got tagged with a meme by the inimitable Dr. Flea, of whose recognition I am totally not worthy. Although normally, memes, meh, this "Thinking Blogs" meme gives me the opportunity to give props to several excellent thinkers and writers who routinely send my tiny brain into spasms of…
March 18, 2007
On Friday, I did something I never thought I'd have the guts to do: I looked a patient in the eye and told her I was not going to treat her pain. It was hard.
She had been admitted the previous day with nausea, vomiting, and epigastric pain. Although she had some marks of a drug seeker--she was…
March 14, 2007
This is maybe my favorite and/or the most aggressively nerdy thing on ScienceBlogs so far: it's smoking hot, one-on-one, science competition in the abstract, with brackets and everything. Way more interesting than stupid college sports.
Obviously, I'm most interested in the life sciences bracket,…
March 13, 2007
This week's Grand Rounds is up at Scienceroll. You read, you like!
Addended 11:20 pm:
I keep forgetting to post about the excellent Change of Shift, a biweekly (I think) carnival of nurse blogging.
March 12, 2007
It's a very exciting week for residents all over the country. This Thursday, at exactly 12:00 EST, we find out who next year's chumps are--for this Thursday is Match Day.
It is a spectacle most powerful for the sheer simultaneousness of the reactions it elicits. The vindication for some, the…