You must unlearn what you have learned

My friend, being the jerk that he is, corrected my golf swing. If you've ever seen my golf swing, you'd know that this is no easy task. My golf swing is entirely wrong. There's so much wrong that you can't really point out one thing to fix.

My friend is of course a natural and hit the ball 200 yds on his first time on the range. No one ever said life was fair. I took my piece of humble pie like a man. But the problem came when he tried to fix my swing. He made me move up on the ball, change my grip, fix my mechanics.

Now, I can't even remember how to swing my way. It's completely lost. But I'm no good at swinging the 'right' way, which means that the last few times I went to the range, the furthest ball I hit was 70 yds, and it rolled that far with a downslope and a tailwind.

But every now and then, you need to unlearn comfortable habits. You need to relearn and rediscover things, and find a new and different way, because it's exciting. It's exciting to hit a ball again. It's exciting to watch a ball sail high in the air, and it's utterly heartwrenching to miss on my swing and top off a ball.

I hate having to relearn how to swing, but it's nice to remember how wonderful it felt to be excited again.

Capped

I capped on admissions for the first time. It's a novel experience, knowing that I actually cannot admit any more patients. I'm not sure if it's scary or comforting. I do know that I'll probably live to regret it. I usually live to regret things.

Game day

I was cursing up a storm today watching football. I was dropping f-bombs like it was my job. I remember now why I try not to watch a lot of football. My blood pressure must be sky high right now. Oh well, that's life I guess.

But it made me remember when I was in college and how much I loved football back then. Oh, I guess I still love it, but it made such a difference being in college and surrounded by the environment, y'know?

I probably should have done something social today, but I just wasn't in the mood. I've been sitting on some replies to my online personal ads, I just feel kind of stalled out. I need a second wind on life.

As a note, if you're wondering where all the posts are coming from, I sit on posts for a couple days usually to edit them, etc.

First children

I was thinking about my friends the other day, and I came upon a disturbing realization: nearly all my friends are either the first child or an only child. All my best friends from high school and college are first kids. Only one or two of my med school friends are younger siblings. It's absolutely astounding.

I'm not sure why that is, since I don't know many only children. Most of my friends do indeed have a younger sibling, if not multiple younger siblings. Just seems like I've got many friends in the older sibling department. Maybe it's that older siblings tend to be the achievers and younger siblings tend to lay back and watch the world drift by. I don't know.

Similarly, I find myself very disturbed that I was talking to a single friend of mine, and the fact that I've had a total of 3 dates in the last 5 years is entirely non-representative of single doctors out there. With my doctor credentials, I really should be doing better. What am I doing wrong? Oh yes, working 70 hours a week, that's right.

I should note, I'm a younger sibling. -9/25/05

Do your fucking job

Nothing irritates me more than when I'm asked to do someone else's work. It is, far and away, the most aggravating thing imaginable, and the greatest offenders without comparison are the ER folks. And today was no exception. I was called to evaluate a patient in the ER who was hemodynamically stable, and all that was done was an EKG. There was not a physician eval completed, no labs were back, nothing. For all I knew, the guy could've had a troponin of 56.

So now, I'm taking an H+P from scratch. I am for all intents and purposes now an ER doc that can admit. The ER doc did his charting AFTER I did orders and dictated my H+P. At that point, why even bother? H+P trumps ER papers. All you can do is make me look bad, because what if a lab comes back now and you chart it? Now I've got to make extra special point in my H+P to note that this wasn't done and that wasn't done, just to guard against the possibility that you'll chart on it way late.

I told the ER to get my patient upstairs as fast as they could not because he was acute or urgent, but I didn't want my patient to stay in the ER if that was the level of shitty care he was going to get.

If you have anything to do with the ER, please remember two things. (1) If you're going to call for admit or consult on a patient, be sure to have your own paperwork done. (2) If you're going to call for admit or consult from cards and you haven't even got labs back yet, someone better be dying.