Zzz...Last Day Radiology. Where do you go to school?

I came back to Hermann after my 1week of mini vacation to radiology. My attending came back from Hawaii where he attended a conference. We started are usual routine loading up the films on his 5 panel HD monitors and began reading. He knew it was after the match and asked where I had matched. I told him and he was surprised and said "you did really well". He continued to ask where the rest of my class matched. I assumed he would probably be mostly interested in where our classmates matched for radiology. As I listed places out, he continued to be in some shock and awe. He said your school did very well for the match seeing that you come from the non-tiered medical school. I agreed our class did well knowing we come from an unknown medical school to even most Texans.

Before I go into work in the morning I come to the hospital to eat breakfast. The morning of my last day in the cafeteria I ran into a former TCOM student who is 1 year ahead of me and recognized my jacket and stopped me. I learned he matched to Gen Surgery at UT Houston (Ben Harvey) he wanted to know where everyone in my class matched too. He seemed to like UT Houston and that was our quick run in.

Back to reading films...

As we trudged through films, my attending still jet lagged was noticeably getting more and more tired and started to slow his voice. His eyelids became heavy and he started to SLEEP! I was sleepy too but wow...I have never seen an attending fall asleep at work ...Haha. He could not stand it we got a coffee break...ie we head down to the attending's lounge and grab sodas, juice, bagels, and coffee.

On my very last day a we saw a abdomen film where there was an abnormal instrument count. We were called to interpret a film of that pt. The story is the pt had some surgery the night before by the Ob/Gyns. The ob/gyn left the room after his part was done, and a plastic surgeon followed to close. Apparently plastics left some sort of plastic forceps in the patient's belly. It looked like it was just underneath the skin ...YIkes!

Hello my name is ...

The day of match, I recieved 2 emails from CCF. One from an intern sending congrats and sending out his email, phone number and stuff to all the new incoming interns (me). From this list everyone has emailing each other a group of 20 of us brief introductions of themselves.

That start like this: "Hi Everyone, my name is [Schizophrenia] I am 25. I grew up in Houston. I graduated from the Univ of Texas at Austin, and attended UNT for med school in DFW. In my spare time I enjoy sunsets and long walks on the beach...to that extent. I don't know anything about living in the North, or how to deal with snow. I am excited to hear about you guys and to meet you in June."

Here is what I really wanted to say. "My name is [Schizophrenia] I am 25. I grew up in Houston. I graduated from the Univ of Texas at Austin, and attended UNT for med school in DFW. In my spare time I enjoy SLEEPING, EATING, SURFING THE INTERNET, WATCHING TV/MOVIES. I am actually now dreading to move up North because its so COLD and snowy, and fear getting seasonal affective disorder (ie Winter Depression) as much as I fear getting skin cancer in Texas. I will definitely miss wearing shorts in November and BBQing throughout the year. I hope all 20 of you guys are half as cool as my med school friends.
Peace out."

Anyways I am starting ER at Dallas Methodist next week. Anyone know anything about ER? Any books I should carry on me?

Matched too High?

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=612245

After Match

So after Match day, everything slowly begins to sink in daily.
1. I have to move far I mean really far.
2. Although, everyone is "Excited to start", I am frankly just scared/anxious/worried of this new change ie new city, new home, new friends, new routine
3. I think I was my smartest self maybe end of 3rd year. I have about forgot a lot of medical knowledge.

I Matched!!!! Anesthesiology ...Location ...TBA

Congratulations to all my buddies. We all matched!!! The buildup to this day was one of the most nerve wrecking I could remember. It reminded me of 4 years ago when I had to check online where I had matched for Med school. Did I or Did I not get in? Sitting in front of the computer pressing the refresh button over and over.

It's all downhill NOW !!!

March 09 Radiology

I'm doing radiology this month in Houston at Hermann (level 1 trauma-private)which is in the Houston Med center. For those of you not familiar with Houston & its Med Center it means one thing "NO PARKING" unless you want to pay a frigging crazy sum of money for a precious parking spot. Well of course I would not fork over any money for such a luxury since my rotation is no call, no weekends. I park at Rice stadium daily (for FREE!) and walk to Hermann. It's a 1 mile walk from where I park to the hospital. The walk isn't so bad its just the crazy 80% humidity that makes my walk turn from pleasant stroll to hot, smelly, sweaty, hair all over the place -appearing crazy person.

So okay once I get past the walk, lets talk Radiology. Radiology is one awesome job. My attendings come in around 8:15am and work until about 4:30-5pm. Its such a nice relaxing, low stress atmosphere. We spend the AM looking at all the overnight CXR in all the ICU's then look at CTs after that. There are 2 attendings: one kinda looks like a young glamazon- nice clothes, perfecto makeup, designer handbag, & some expensive jewelery bespeckled over her wrists. The other is a superbly funny 60ish attending from NY. He's jewish and was a former staff at John Hopkins. Well overcourse during the rotation you kinda feel out who can hang around and who doesn't really want you hanging around them. Well I get the feeling the glamazon doesn't really want me around her when she's dictating. So I spend most my time with the later funny attending which is great for me. It's just that he's going to gone for an entire week on a meeting I dont know what to do. I tried hanging around a resident but since she's a first year its not helpful to sit and watch her. Any suggestions. On afternoons that the glamazon attending is the only person in the room, I take the afternoon off. I hope they chang attendings or something, what am I going to do for a whole week?
Did I mention: that the glamazon told me to excuse myself and go to the library while she and the resident have a talk in the "reading room". I mean literally i had to go to the library (around the hall) and I read from like 8:15 to 9am, until my funny attending came it and I felt it safe to go back.

Well besides reading Chest xrays all morning the attendings really make it fun, but sprinkling a lot of sarcasm and jokes to everyone in the room. The major thing the radioloigst has to do if they find something impt on film is notify either the nurse or dr. taking care of the pt. They do spend a lot of time dictating their findings. If there's a complicated case you can easily spend 30 mins just reviewing old images.

I'm learning alot from this rotation, its been super useful esp. learning what all the lines are on CXR and where they should be.

Reverse Time Line - Feb 2009

I spent February in Tyler. My first impression : its much cleaner and appealing to my eye than Odessa. After a short time there the patients are nice, the doctors are nice and everyone was pleasant. I was the only girl med student rotating among 4 total med students. It was nice of them to offer free housing. The best thing out of the entire cabin was cable internet. A typical day was spent mostly in clinic. I spent a lot of time following a sleep medicine specialist and learned all the ins and outs of sleep apnea. So much of what I heard was so alarming that I myself may have sleep apnea. Everyone may say, surely you don't: you are not overweight middle aged male. I do have daytime sleepiness and I have a FMH of sinus disease (risk factor for sleep apnea) , I would like a sleep study to be done on me, but its too expensive. Mostly I think it would be interesting to see the results. The other half of the time at Tyler I followed a 2nd DR who does a lot of just plain pulm med. It was alot of COPD exacerbation. This is the first time I actually dictated a H&P and it was hard trying not to sound like a retard. I kept wanting to start over because I forgot alot of information. Overall I learned a lot of pulm at Tyler. It was a nice short month.