OSH

OSH (outside hospital) lab:

Intern: This is Dr. Intern, calling from Non-descript University. I'd like to check the status of a culture that was drawn at your facility before the patient was transferred here.

OSH: sure. What's a culture?

Intern (dumb-founded): Um, a sample of the fluid, like blood or CSF, to see if there is infection.

OSH: okay. We have this sample from Wednesday. I can fax you the report.

Intern: That would be good, but could you give me verbal report about the culture?

OSH: not really - I can't really understand the report.

Intern (again, dumbfounded): I guess you'll have to fax it then. Does it say anthing about susceptibilities?

OSH: what does that mean?

Intern (no longer optimistic about medicine at all): does it say which antibiotics we can use to treat the infection.

OSH: Wow! We can test for that? Why don't we do that on every sample, that way we would know exactly what to treat them with?

Intern (losing all hope): we do that. Just fax me the report.

OSH: okay. Have a nice day!

Many people ask me why I chose Pediatrics. I have standard answers, depending on the questioner:

"Adults are icky. They smell. "
"Because if you save a child's life, you will get a Christmas card from their family forever."
"Because I still get to play with toys and watch cartoons and call it 'research'."

But, by far, the best thing about taking care of children is their simplicity. When I go to the nursery to see a newborn, there is something very zen about the fact that this tiny person is, for the moment, unblemished. They don't have fear or anxiety. They eat without worrying if it's going to make them fat. They take pure joy in sleep and do it as much as possible. The world has not caught up with them, making them angry, bitter, or cynical.

I am a part of that joy. When I tell a mother, "your baby looks wonderful," there is utter happiness. It's a privilege.

On Call

A lovely night spent in the hospital, living in perpetual fear that your pager will go off and send you off to doom. That's what call is to me.

You shove food into your mouth in-between patients being admitted or needing something acutely. The nurses page you for things that you think could have been handled without your input. They don't page you when something happens that you think warranted a notification.

The nighttime has a strange emptiness to it, somehow. I don't know how people work night shift all the time, especially when they do it by choice. There are reasons that most things aren't open at this hour - you would not want to be the person who has to provide service for the person who decides that 3am is an appropriate time to do anything but sleep.

Some people thrive on the pressure. They work well in an environment where their sphincter is in a constant state of pucker. I am NOT one of these people.

My mantra: keep them alive until morning.

Begin at the Beginning

While perusing the blogosphere in my time on call, I tend to gravitate toward medical blogs. These are an immense comfort to me, knowing that I'm not the only person out there who deals with alarmingly dumb things on a day-to-day basis. But, I have found that medical blogs about pediatricians are not really plentiful, which is sad, as I think we have the best stories.

And so, I have created this one. A place to discuss/rant/pose quandries about the amazing field we call pediatrics. This one in particular is exciting, as it is focused on those of us suffering through residency and the perils and pitfalls along the way.

So join, my friends. Perhaps you can find the humor, too.