Internal Medicine HIGHLIGHTS!

So I'm back at Maricopa County Hospital...it's pretty much my favorite hospital in the Valley. It's a state hospital so it's ghetto, totally old school, and serves most of the valley's mexican population, prisoner's, homeless, and immigrants. For this reason, you see the most pathlogy and some of the craziest/sickest/grossest people in AZ haha.  The system that the hospital uses as far as charting is pretty archaic and slow. But it's a great teaching facility and definitely has some of the BEST and SMARTEST doctors working there.

Here are some of the highlights from my first week:

- Man admitted for complicated UTI because he cut off his penis and testicles at home with a kitchen knife. The voice of God told him to do this 1 yr ago and he has major reconstructive surgery to "repair" the damage. He is now prone to UTI's.

- Met my first hoarder... she literally pooped, ate, peed, slept, etc in the same spot for weeks.

- I smelled MRSA for the first time. Was examining a homeless (hadn't showered for weeks) patient's wound (on his stump, below the knee amputation) and the attending asked me to describe the smell...i thought he was kidding...he wasn't. I also almost threw up in my mouth.

- Did my first lumbar puncture, completely solo! Interns screwed up the order from the previous day and the HIV doc (the pt actually had AIDS) needed more tests....so he asked if I wanted to do it....so I stayed an extra 2 hours waiting to do it! It was a bit scary knowing I could paralyze the guy by sticking a long needle into his spine. BUT...in the moment you forget about everything...and i got it first time! Not even any blood in the first tube :-)

- Realized that Internal Medicine is NOT something I want to do. I find myself being drawn down to the ED every chance I get. Medicine is interesting, but I don't like to follow up on people that much lol...I'm over a patient after a couple of days. Not that I don't like to see people get better, in some cases i like to follow their hospital course and see that my treatment helped...but I'm satisfied with being the first person they see and being done with them thereafter.

- Surgeons are still a-holes, no matter where you go.

- I'm amazed at how many people in this world don't actually use their brains. (i'm not talking about patients)


Ok well those are just the main points from this week! I'm sure i'll have more coming soon!