I am almost burnt out. One ward month is bad, but two in a row is down right tiring. Working 6 or even 7 day weeks can put a damper on your spirits, not to mention your social life and awarness of the world at large. The other day I got home at like 8pm, I think I had probably worked about 12 days straight at that point. I turned on the TV and learned that there was rioting in France, bombings in Jordan, and Bloomberg was re-elected mayor. Jesus, I didn't even know it was election week! So sad.
Barely having time for current events, grocery shopping, laundry, and other necessities of daily living leaves me slim to no time for my poor neglected blog. Well hopefully after this month I can revive it some what at least... And now I've noticed all these spam comments. Does anyone get that? That is just a low blow. With my paltry number of comments a month, I log on and get excited that someone has left a comment, meaning someone actualy read this thing, only to discover that it is some spam link to a porn site or something like that. Now that is not right. I wonder if anyone else gets that crap....
My service on the wards right now is straight up geriatrics, not to mention the fact that I can barely communicate with any of them. I have 2 people on ventilators who cant speak (oddly enough those are my two youngest patients, 55 and 50, poor guys ran into some bad luck with a aneurysm and multiple sclerosis respectively). 2 other people are completely demented and dont speak, 2 of them only speak spanish, and one lady who is completely demented, and only speaks spanish! The average age, if I don't count the two young guys (50s being young), is like 85 or something. Then I got the one 90 year old demented puerto rican lady who is demented and non-sensical, for reasons yet unclear to us. We thought she had a stroke or infection, but aren't sure. So we did an EEG (brain wave pattern study), and the neurologist think she may have, Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. That's right. "Mad Cow" in humans. One case out of every one million people. Frankly, I think it's the neurologists who are mad. So we gotta tap this lady and freeze a tube and send it to Case Western in Ohio to get the CSF test done. Yet another headache!
Anyway. On call tomorrow, lets hope I get some peeps I can actually have a conversation with....
2 more weeks left, and then I go to Pakistan for 2 weeks. Finally a vacation, it's going to be quite the relief I need. Hopefully I'll get a chance to go do my part with the ongoing Earthquake Relieff process as well. Latest death toll is about 90,000, and millions without shelter. It is unfrotunately getting worse and worse, especially now with the winter seasons coming.... If you haven't already, please donate to help!
Quake Info: www.saquake.org
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