Bronchitis, Death, and Fruit Bars (In No Particular Order)

In addition to being a lazy bastard (see below), I am also a sick one. Coming off a snowboarding trip to Panorama, I appear to have contracted the lung version of that dreaded medical student’s disease, the CancerAIDS. Might even be EbolaCancerAIDS, I’m not sure. But I do know I’ve been coughing pretty much nonstop, occasionally producing some blood, for the past three days. This is unfortunate, since I’ve just started Internal Medicine, one of the more demanding rotations, and not a time to be getting sick.

Things came to a head on Wednesday, supposedly my first night on call. It was hellaciously busy; the internal medicine service got six consults from 4 until 5, and at 9 PM we had 11 patients clogging the emergency room. Of course, as I’m new at this, I’m very slow in processing patients so I’d gotten one done by myself while the rest were split between the doctor on call and the resident.

Granted, matters were not much helped by the lung infection of doom. During one particularly nasty coughing bout, a passing nurse dragged me over to a thermometer, stuck it in my ear, told me my temperature was 38.2 degrees, and got the resident to tell me to go home. At that point I realized that a) I’d tell any one of my patients with a fever and coughing their lungs out to stay home from work, and b) I was probably not inspiring much confidence amongst the patient population witnessing me slowly die from oxygen deprivation. So I finished my patient writeup (only took 3 hours in total!) and bailed. Er, after I laid down on a cot until the walls started melting, that is. And I’ve been stuck at home, doped out on NeoCitran ever since.

The unfortunate aside to this is that a good friend of mine’s mother passed away of cancer that night, as it happens in the same hospital, on my service. They were aware that her son’s a medical student, so they kept her care out of the hands of those of us who knew her, but it still rams home the fact that, some (most?) of the time, there’s nothing anybody in medicine can do to save the patient. And we just have to sit there and watch them slip away. And it’s worse – so much worse – when you know the person going, and sit there helplessly while the nice woman who made you tzatziki and roast lamb struggles to breathe.

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On to happier things: snowboarding! I still suck at snowboarding! The hill at Panorama was, sadly, covered in ice; since I’m still learning how to carve, I fall a lot, and falling on ice fucking HURTS. I probably only went about six hours total on the weekend before my knees and quads gave out, which is just as well given how much I’d been drinking. The weekend was fun as hell; however, I did realize that I’m generally happier sitting drunkenly in a hot tub in the mountains than falling down the mountain strapped to a fiberglass plank. Go figure. Oh, and the name of the resort (Panorama) is very apt.

I also made a fantastic discovery that weekend: Fruit Source bars. God, those things are fantastic; essentially, they’re compressed fruit, roughly the size of a small granola bar. Every (tasty) bar contains 3 goddamn servings of fruits and vegetables. Two of those and you’re set for the day! Say goodbye to scurvy, everybody! Your teeth are staying just where they are! Granted, we'll probably find out in a few years that ingredient number one is "Green, Soylent," but in the interim they're a good way to get all that heart-preserving fruity goodness.

So that’s my public service announcement for today. And that’s long enough, as well… My next update will be even more interesting, I promise: that’s where I talk about the morgue, and the Incredible Exploding Woman. Stay tuned!