Vacation

So intern year is starting to wear on us all. I am not usually the one to get burnt out but it has happened. I think the problem is that we really never get away from it all unless we have a week of vacation. We are all sleep deprived so when we have time off, we all sleep and never get to clear our minds. I told my wife last night that I just need to get away for a few days. She thought we could go somewhere for the 1 day I have off this weekend but that's the problem, one day isn't enough. I hope we are working hard now so that in the future we can close our offices and pull the kids out of school at the drop of hat to fly to Miami for the weekend.

For now, I will listen to my fake waves on my iPhone and take myself back to this experience

Pericardial effusion

One of my new patients this week has a large pericardial effusion which is basically a large sac of fluid that surrounds your heart and won't let it expand to fill with blood. She felt short of breath after getting dialysis on Thursday. This is a life threatening illness but she refused surgery last time she was here. She says she might have it now so we are planning to open her chest tomorrow (if she will let us). Here is her chest CT and xray. Notice the water bottle shaped heart!

New baby boy

Yesterday my wife and I found out that we will be having a baby boy in July. We got to see him for the first time yesterday. Some people are already saying he looks like me but we will see. We have to go back in 4 weeks for a repeat ultrasound because they couldn't get a good look at his heart and one of his kidneys is a little big. More to come...

Pet peeves

One of my pet peeves is inefficiency. I have had to deal with a good amount of this over the past few days in medicine.

I hate (I know you aren't suppose to hate but rather dislike) when we do certain things and we don't know why or better yet we know there is a better option. Does any of this make sense? On the day that I learn whether I am having a boy or a girl, I hope we can all explain why we make the decisions we make and don't use the excuse "that's just the way we have always done it." Today I feel like this guy:

Tomorrow is the big day...

So tomorrow I find out whether my wife and I are having a boy or a girl this summer. Over the past few days I have run into more people who despise kids and have said they never want to have kids. I find this funny because kids are the only thing I am sure I want, afterall aren't we here to procreate?

Why don't people want kids? Are they selfish and don't want to give up their late nights? Are they scared? Did you know the avg couple has 1.5 kids and at that rate our world will be without mankind in 5000 years or so? So get out there and get busy, literally. Check out patelportal.wordpress.com to follow my new family.

Why do we complain?

So ER is just not for me. I am not saying its the worst thing I have ever done but its just not for me. I am sitting here in the middle of the night treating people that don't need to be in the ER, afterall the "E" in ER does stand for emergency.

But this has all got me to thinking, why medical students and residents (and I guess some doctors) complain so much? We complain about the hours, the patients, the type of work but we should really be thankful.

1. We get to work with people of our own age (for the most part)...there is a psych resident here who is 65 and everyone calls him Benjamin Button.

2. We get to take care of people who have a wide variety of problems and on sometimes we even get entertained while at work.

3. Our minds are stimulated (almost to the point of exhaustion) everyday which is more than I can say about alot of other people after having spoken to alot of my friends that graduated college with me.

This doesn't mean every day is great buy maybe our jobs are better than we think.

Snow day

My favorite thing about lots of snow is seeing all the cars spun out and in ditches. I stopped o. The way to work to check out this one:


Unfortunately I still had to go to work today. Hospitals never close.

Today is a the first day...

Today is the first day of my new blog..I have one for the family already (patelportal.wordpress.com) so this one is for me. I am excite to post funny things from work, Memphis happenings, and other thoughts on here regularly. Enjoy!