No Method, Just Madness

I’m still holding out for the impromptu dancing in the streets though

Published July 19, 2010 trust me i'm a doctor 4 Comments

Finishing residency is a lot like having a birthday. You expect to feel different…older, more mature, accomplished. But, really, you just feel like you did the day before: tired and a little gassy.¹

Last Thursday was my final day of residency. And after seven PLUS² years of bustin’ my balls, I kind of expected a parade, a speech, a couple mojitos, and possibly even some impromptu dancing in the streets. Sure, there was a formal graduation dinner a few weeks ago at a country club wherein us graduates and our friends and family were gathered (including my recently widowed Mamacusa and my remarried, recently babied³ father & his wife, none of whom had been in each other’s presence since my wedding…Hello, Awkward, we haven’t had enough of you this year, have a seat right here between my divorced biological parents!) and fed mediocre food while some attendings said a smattering of vaguely nice things about all of us before handing us diplomas…but that was boring. I’d rather have the parade with the mojitos.

Imagine my disappointment when I exited the hospital on Thursday afternoon and there was no fucking marching band. Boo. Don’t get me wrong, I was ecstatic…I just wanted a witness! Can a girl surgeon no longer in need of attending supervision get a witness up in here?

I got a witness. I had celebratory frozen yogurt with a favorite Ho of mine (Ho Fro-Yo?) on the way home and then, later that night, had beer and sushi with The Brit and some homies. It’s a well-known fact that, if you can’t have a parade, the second best way to commemorate finishing seven years of surgical training is to eat dairy and then, later, eat salmon eggs over rice all wrapped up in seaweed. Word.

Friday was my first official day of Not Being A Resident and the only two things I had on my agenda after waking up and questioning the prior night’s diet choices were: 1) tackle the laundry pile and 2) make mojito mix for mass consumption. There was to be a party in my honor at a bar in our barrio the following day and the bartender informed us in advance that mojitos were too labor intensive to make. Sorry, but the one thing La Cubana Gringa needs at a party in her honor at a bar is mojitos. Luckily, I have a DNA-imbedded blueprint on my Cuban chromosome for the best mojito mix ever and it makes mass-mojito making easy and fun!

So, I spent Friday in my jammies, loading the washer, squeezing limes, rinsing mint, testing the mojito mix, and repeating. This may explain why the laundry was fortified with citrus-minty freshness and the mojito mix might have had a sock in it.

Saturday, we partied with lots of amigos. The theme: SEVEN!!! FUCKING!! YEARS! CAN I GET A WITNESS? It’s what I put on the Evite that I sent out to everyone…I figured that finishing general surgery residency was grounds for liberal usage of F-bombs, exclamation points!!! & CAPITAL FUCKING LETTERS! Little did I know that The Brit would take that theme and emblaze it on custom made coasters, napkins, and specialty drink menus. Also, he’d renamed the specialty drinks…a Mojito became a “Whipple” and a Moscow Mule became a “Colonoscopy.” It’s a good thing it was an open bar, because otherwise, my friends might have been cognizant of the fact that they were asking the bartender to probe their colon or surgically excise their pancreas. Yeah, you’re going to want some sedation for that.

All in all, I had a great time and this weekend was a great ending to seven long years. I have a thoughtful husband and crazy, amazing (Cramazing!) friends and THAT is worth more than any parade.

1. Having two helpings of eggplant lasagna the night before was ill-advised and should be avoided at all costs in the future.
2. Remember, I had to work 3 weeks past graduation!
3. WTF? Yeah, that’s what I said when my dad & his wife adopted a baby last August.

And I STILL got a letter of recommendation out of that guy!

Published July 9, 2010 ay Dios mio , trust me i'm a doctor 1 Comment

Days left in residency: 7 (if you count today), 4 (if you don’t count today or the weekend), (but who’s counting?)

SCENES FROM AN OPERATING ROOM

7:43 PM, Operating Room 3

It’s been one of those days. The surgeons should be done with their cases for the day but, for reasons that don’t just border but full-on straddle the ridiculous, they are only just starting their second, a laparascopic partial colectomy. Who starts a lap colon at 8 PM?

La Cubana Gringa, a well-seasoned resident, busies herself with positioning the anesthetized patient and getting things going. She knows Dr. X is on his last nerve.

Dr. X enters, visibly frustrated. He’s totally pitted out. This confuses La Cubana Gringa.

La Cubana Gringa voiceover: WTF? Did he just do a quick Insanity plyometrics cardio uber-abs work out DVD in between the last case and now?*

Dr. X: What?

LCG: What?

Dr. X: You’re looking at me funny.

LCG: Sorry. You just look…frustrated.

Dr. X: I am. This is bullshit. Who starts a lap colon at 8 PM?

He exits the room to go scrub before LCG can come up with an obnoxious comment that lives up to her high personal standards.

Twenty-six minutes later, the ports are in and the case is started. Dr. X mans the camera. LCG is dissecting out the vascular pedicle like it’s her job. Well, it is her job…she just happens to be mind-blowingly good at it.*

Dr. X: You are mind-blowingly good at this.*

LCG ligates the pedicle and proceeds to dissect posterior to the upper part of the rectum.

LCG (playfully brown-nosing): Well, you know… when you have a good teacher!

Dr. X: Ass kisser.

LCG: Ass doctor.

Dr. X is, in fact, a colorectal surgeon. The two surgeons laugh heartily at the well-timed pun. The mood lifts somewhat. Perhaps the glands in Dr. X’s axillae have even slowed production. The case proceeds along smoothly and conversation drifts to more lighthearted topics.

LCG (while operating): Ok. So, what’s the grossest thing you’ve ever had squirted in your eye?

Dr. X: Hmm. Give me a second to think about it. How about you?

LCG: I once had the contents of a sebaceous cyst splatter into my left eye.

LCG recalls the incident as if it were permanently squirted onto her left cornea. The sebaceous cyst was the largest she’d ever seen, at least 4 CM, on the upper back of an emergency room patient several years back. She was just sterilizing the overlying skin when the tender, almost transparent flesh that separated her from the cheesy, sebaceous matter inside the cyst ruptured. She was simultaneously dazzled and flabbergasted by the kinetic energy with which the cyst contents exploded onto her hair, face, and left eye. It smelled not unlike vomited blue cheese. It was disgusting. She should have worn eye protection.

Dr. X: That’s disgusting. You totally should have worn eye protection.

LCG: Yeah, well, you know what they say about hindsight. Your turn.

Dr. X: Oh, I don’t know…I vaguely remember something gynecologic ending up in my eyes during med school. Too long ago though.

LCG: “Something gyneocologic” ends up in your eye at ANY point in your life and you forget it?? Boo. You’re boring.

Dr. X: I know.

Unbeknownst to the surgeons, outside, a thick, foreboding cloud cover rolls in.* Almost like something ironic and bad is going to happen later.

9:23 PM, Emergency Department

While his chief resident, La Cubana Gringa, is the the OR with Dr. X, the surgical consult resident on call evaluates a patient in the emergency department who he thinks might have a peri-anal abscess.

Surgical Consult Resident (eagerly, proud of his diagnostic prowess): This guy needs a rectal exam under anesthesia and surgical drainage!

He scuttles up to the OR to schedule the case and wonders, passively, if he remembered to wash his hands. He sniffs his index finger and seems satisfied with the result.*

11:49 PM, OR 3

The colon case is finished and the peri-anal abscess patient is now on the OR table in the lithotomy position. It’s a commonly used position; completely utilitarian, albeit comically so. Though, top points for Most Comedic Position, in La Cubana Gringa’s book, still goes to face down with the butt cheeks taped to the side of the bed so that they are spread open. It’s a good thing patients are asleep before they get put in these positions or they’d feel violated. Or aroused, depending on the patient. LCG ponders this as she raises the OR table to level that’s comfortable for her to proceed.

Dr. X walks in and finds himself eye to eye with the anus in question.

Dr. X (tired): I should have been a florist.

LCG: Who needs to smell flowers when you have 24-hour access to the human perineum?

Dr. X chuckles.

LCG dons her gown and gloves, positions herself between the patient’s legs and, with a little lube, does a quick rectal exam.

LCG: Hmm, I don’t feel an abscess in there.

Dr. X hadn’t expected to have to get involved. He sighs heavily as he pulls on a gown and gloves and gets in between the patient’s legs to LCG’s right. Four is a bit of a crowd (what with LCG, Dr. X, the patient’s right testicle, and the patient’s left testicle), but LCG stays where she is. Dr. X does a rectal exam. Pauses. Then sticks a speculum in and looks around.

Dr. X: I agree. I don’t feel anything either. But the patient was in excruciating pain. So he probably has an intersphincteric abscess. In which case you should just make a small incision with a scalpel right here.

He points to a spot in the patient’s anal canal. LCG feels the spot with her finger and appreciates the space between the internal and external anal sphincters. She grabs an 11-blade and makes a small incision. LCG is instantaneously startled by the feeling of something warm and wet splattering onto her forehead just above her right eyebrow. She instinctively squeezes her right eye shut; she’s wearing her glasses so she doesn’t think anything got into her eye but one can’t be too sure when butt puss is amongst list of possible projectile liquids.

LCG turns her head to the right to look over at Dr. X, her right eye still clenched shut. Simultaneously, he turns his head to the left to face her, his left eye clenched shut. They are mirror images of each other. Dr. X has butt puss showered fancifully along the left side of his face and all over his left eyelid. It smells of poo mixed with curdled milk and toe jam.

LCG: So, back to my question from earlier. What’s the grossest thing you’ve ever had squirted in your eye?

Dr. X: I hate you.

LCG: You totally should have worn eye protection.

* These items may be exaggerated and/or somewhat completely fictional.

Screw it, we might as well peel potatoes in the shower now

Published July 8, 2010 ay Dios mio 3 Comments

Never does one truly appreciate how convenient a working drain is more than the point at which the drain ceases to actually drain. Seriously, write that shit down.

For the last couple of weeks, we’ve been having plumbing problems. Showers have become more of a wading experience. I’ll wade the shit out of the ocean tide but wading in the AIDS, ebola, herpes, hepatits C, e. coli, prion stew that invariably results from one of my showers after a shift at the hospital and, well…that’s just gross. This coming from a girl whose job description involves incising and draining butt puss. Daily I resist the temptation to culture our bathtub…the results, I think, would be simultaneously horrifying and provocative, and in the very least, publishable. For now, though, I just carry a crucifix with me into the shower and hope for the best. Peace be with you, MRSA!

As Lady Luck would have it, we discovered a cute little clause in our rental agreement that reads a little something like this:

Greetings imbecile future tenants who do not read fine print! As ricockulous as this may seem, ye tenants and ye alone are responsible for ALL of the pipes in this house. Even though this house was built before the gold rush! Crazy but true! So good luck with that! Suckers!

Yeah, so…because of that little clause, we’ve been trying to take care of the plumbing matters ourselves. And by “we” and “ourselves” I mean, “The Brit” and “The Brit”. I don’t plumb. So, the other day, The Brit donned his saggiest pair of butt-crack exposing jeans and jammed a plumber’s snake down the bathtub drain. After some chest beating, grunting, farting and other various displays of manliness, out came a multi-lobulated amalgam of hair (you’re welcome!), toenail clippings (how’d those get there, you ask? Don’t worry, it’s coming up), and zombie balls (probably).

This brings me to one of the main topics of contention in The Brit’s – La Cubana Gringa’s Lexicon of Grievances: Is the bathtub an acceptable location for toenail clippage? I say no. He says yes. I remove the nail clipper from the bathtub. He puts it back in. I say goodbye. He says hello. It’s like The Beatles ARE THE SOUNDTRACK TO OUR LIVES!

Anyway, it chaps my disproportionately large ass that he clips his nails in the tub because hair is one thing. But hair plus toenails = Matrix of Unequivocal Obstruction.

Plumbing if I had it my way:

Approximate frequency of drain blockage: less than once a year

Plumbing if The Brit has it his way:

Approximate frequency of drain blockage: many, many times a year. MANY.

All this talk of toenail clippings and plumbing reminds me of a patient I treated a few times. There was this dude who was incarcerated for Lord Only Knows, and his idea of a ticket out of jail was to find some excuse to get taken to the hospital and then try to escape from the Emergency Department. Good plan, right? Except that his ticket to the hospital involved sticking various objects into his urethra and obstructing his urinary outflow tract. In other words, he was cramming his pee-hole with stuff. Stuff like: toenail clippings, the serrated end of a plastic cafeteria knife, screws, nails, splinters, drink straws (probably the crazy ones).

All two men who read this blog just grabbed their crotches and gagged a little. Sorry about that.

Trust me when I say that anyone who inserts sharp foreign objects into their urethra as a means to get out of jail clearly has a few screws loose. (And not just the ones they’ve shoved up their urethra! Zing!!). Anyway, that guy a) clearly hadn’t thought things through all the way b) didn’t succeed in escaping despite stuffing his penis like a Home Depot Thanksgiving Turkey on three separate occasions and c) probably wasn’t aware that toenail clippings only create a Matrix of Unequivocal Obstruction.

You know, at first I thought this digression was only going to provide a brief interlude of dubiously related and somewhat morbid entertainment, but in the end, it furnished further supporting evidence for my theory that toenail clippings have no place in pipes of any kind.

Science! It’s irrefutable.

So anyway, back to the amalgam that was delivered from our bathtub drain. Did its extraction make things better? If by “better” you mean, “it did nothing for the drainage in the bathtub and, in fact, made it so that now the kitchen and bathroom sinks don’t drain either” then yes. Things were much, much better. Which led me to conclude the following:

So, if you hear about a British/Cuban couple that die in an index case of bathtub-acquired creutzfeldt-jakob disease, don’t mourn us for too long, we totally had it coming.

I won’t start getting panicky until I hit my early late 30’s

Published June 30, 2010 Uncategorized 1 Comment

I distinctly recall being eight and thinking that people in their 20’s were old.¹ People in their 30’s were washed up has-beens. And actual old, wrinkled people? They were already dead, just hanging out until there was an open slot in purgatory. Or outer space.

Then again, when I was eight, I also thought that I had my finger on the pulse of the 1980’s fashion movement. There was this one outfit that I put together all by myself. It combined an aqua tie-dyed Minnie mouse t-shirt that came to my belly button with a pink tank top underneath (I wasn’t allowed to show my belly button because only sluts showed their belly buttons.) with a white floral-print denim knee-length skirt (I wasn’t allowed to wear above-the-knee skirts because only sluts wore mini-skirts. Only sluts watched Dirty Dancing too. Pearls of wisdom from Mamacusa.) with three pairs of tube socks (pink, blue, yellow…to match the flowers on the denim skirt) scrunched down to look like tri-colored leg warmers and white reebok high-top Velcro sneakers. Man, I rocked that shit. I had to beat the boys away with my enormous, blue, plastic/metal combo framed grandma glasses.

If I had a time machine, I’d travel back to my eight year old self, counsel her on the future photographic ramifications of that outfit, and then I’d sit down and watch Dirty Dancing with her. (I was eight in 1985 and the movie wouldn’t even come out for another two years but, fuck it, nobody puts Baby in the corner!) Then, I’d give her a post-movie talk about how 20 is not old…and, you know what? Neither is 30. In fact, in the future, this is how we will regard one’s 30’s:

The Thirties:
30 –late, late, late 20’s
31 – early early 30’s
32 – mid early 30’s
33 – late early 30’s
34 – early mid 30’s
35 – mid 30’s
36 – late mid 30’s
37 – early late 30’s
38 – mid late 30’s
39 – late late 30’s
40 – late late late 30’s

So, see! I’m only in my late early 30’s…I’ve still got AGES before I should start carelessly spending my retirement money and telling people what I REALLY think of them!

1. This may have something to do with the fact that when I was 8, my Mamacusa was 27. God, she was a loose woman! one might think. Perhaps, yes, but more importantly, she was a MARRIED loose woman.

Add that to the list of things that med school was good for

Published June 28, 2010 trust me i'm a doctor 1 Comment

Days left in residency: 18

The other day I was seeing patients in clinic with one of the colorectal surgeons. Lots of run-of-the-mill problems of the colorectal variety, you know: colon cancer, hemorrhoids, rectal prolapse, gerbils, that sort of thing. Much of this clinic is spent performing anoscopy – the fancy term for inserting a cold, sterile, six-inch metal tube up a person’s poop shoot and poking around while trying not to laugh.

Given that this minor procedure requires a rather compromising body position, we like to preserve what’s left of a person’s dignity by providing them with a cloth drape that allows them to cover all but the area of interest.

It looks like this:

And is meant to be worn like this:

Apparently some patients are so nervous about the impending medically approved sodomy that they don’t hear the nurse’s instructions for how to put it on. I can only assume that is the explanation for why one particular patient was found in his exam room with his drape fashioned as such:

It’s a good thing I can tell the difference between the oral and anal cavities¹ otherwise he might have gotten a mouth full of lube and a referral to the orthodontist to have some braces installed on his malaligned and curiously calcified hemorrhoids.

1. Those who didn’t go to med school might confuse the two on the basis that both have the potential for producing nonsensical diarrhea and both, depending on manscaping and hygiene, can be hairy and malodorous.

Yeah, I can amputate that for you

Published June 23, 2010 trust me i'm a doctor 1 Comment
Tags: free medical advice, women doctors

Rule number one of being a doctor? Don’t tell anyone outside the hospital that you’re a doctor. Trust me. It always starts with an innocent medical question. And ends in a dark, dank alleyway with a dubiously indicated excision of some fleshy appendage using nothing but a plastic butter knife for an instrument and The Steve Miller Band’s Greatest Hits album for anesthesia. Abracadabra does surprisingly little to settle the hearts and minds of patients looking for free medical advice.

I was sitting at the BART station the other day, waiting for a train, when a young girl sat down next to me on the bench. Lots of eyeliner, cut-off jean shorts, strategically torn tights…Miley Cyrus + Ke$ha hold the Britney. Old enough to know about the late Michael Jackson, but not old enough to know he used to be black.

She looked at me. Looked at my scrubs. “Are you a nurse?”

I hesitated. On the one hand, if I told her the truth, she might ask me about her unusual skin rash. On the other, if I told her the truth, she might feel all empowered and shit. A doctor with a vagina?¹ Holy fuck, right!? Then she’d straighten out her ways, stop listening to that obnoxious (albeit totally catchy) Ke$ha music, start wearing impalement-resistant tights and bottoms with proper hems…and maybe go to med school. All because she CAN…something that never occurred to her before that fateful and inspired conversation with that haggard appearing, pear shaped lady in scrubs on BART.

In a spasm of feminism, I decided to tell her the truth. I waited for the empowerment (and shit) expecting that it would look something like The Rapture. Whatever that looks like. You know it when you see it, right?

She proceeded to ask me about her unusual skin rash. “Oh, cool. Because I have this funny thing on my thumb.”

She gingerly gave me the thumbs up. About six inches away from my face. (Perhaps she didn’t understand that my glasses had prescription lenses in them?) And I swear a yeast spore jumped out from the scaley patch of skin on her thumb onto my face. I considered, briefly and earnestly, offering her a thumb amputation. But ended up telling her, instead, to get some cream for that shit. And to maybe go see a dermatologist. In the meantime, though, she should probably suck on it.

Bottom line is that people shouldn’t ask me about their medical ailments unless they want an operative intervention of my obnoxious choosing. I understand that strangers might not pigeon-hole me as a surgeon at first glance (I do, afterall, have a vagina²) but family…they should know better than to ask me about their problemas.

One of my relatives of the male, freeloading variety called me up one day after a 2 year lull in conversation. After some awkward small talk in which I determined, with relief, that he didn’t seem to want money, he got to the point and told me he had a medical issue he needed to ask me about. I could hear the italics in his voice. I braced myself. Italics are never good.

“So I have this painful swollen area next to one of my testicles…almost like an extra nut. What should I do about that?”

Wait. Is there a do-over button somewhere? Ask me for money instead!

Thankful that there were 3000+ miles between me and his sweaty, tender tri-balls, I recommended that he get that checked out and warned him that he might need a third nut amputation. I mean, everyone knows a third nut could go one of two ways…cool party trick versus malignancy.³

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I don’t want to help family and friends and random BART passengers. I do! I became a doctor in the first place to help people. (And to be able to write myself prescription drugs.⁴) Perhaps I should just preempt every potential curbside consult with the following public service announcement:

Please kindly keep your herpetic epidermis

and your purulent gonads to yourself.

(Thanks in advance.)

Rarely seen in the wild, not unlike the nurse with a penis.
And LORD knows surgeons don’t have vaginas! I only say this because I’ve spent the last seven years conducting a rigorous research study examining the number of times a woman in scrubs gets called “Doctor” vs “Nurse.” Hypothesis: Women in scrubs never get called “Doctor.” Methods: Be in possession of a vagina and walk around various hospitals in scrubs +/- a long white coat. Results: Women in scrubs get called “Nurse” 100% of the time (p < 0.00000001).
Disclaimer: a “third nut” can be way more than just two things. You’ll be relieved to know, I’m sure, that his was just a follicular abscess. Don’t shave your balls, gents!
Just kidding, Medical Board! Tee hee!

Aaaaaand, she’s back. Again. Now with new and improved lemonade.

Published June 21, 2010 piss and moan , trust me i'm a doctor 3 Comments
Tags: residency, TLM

So. You know how sometimes life hands you lemons? And chirpy, shiny, happy, annoying people tell you that you’re supposed to make lemonade? And, under normal circumstances, you would (because you love lemonade, it’s full of vitamin C and brings you back to happy childhood memories of when your Abuelita used to make it for you from scratch when you were young, carefree, skinny and you had no fucking clue how many calories were in all the sugar in there, am I right?)…but this particular time, all you have is lemons. No water. No sugar. No spoon to stir with. No friggin’ pitcher. Just you. Lemons. And that annoying chirpy person. In the middle of the desert. No camels. No shade. No sunscreen. [Aaaaaand SCENE!]

Yeah, so that’s been my 2010 thus far. We’re up to our tits in lemons over here. The nutshell version? My stepdad, TLM, died this past March at the young age of 51. And a little more than a month later, I miscarried a baby boy 15 weeks into pregnancy.

Don’t think for a second I haven’t had words with God, Mother Earth, and The Cosmos because I have. And they weren’t pretty, dainty, lady-like words. But I’m fairly certain I got my point across and I get the distinct feeling that the remaining necessary ingredients for lemonade should be arriving shortly. I’m just about ready for a little sugar is all I’m sayin’. (And, for the moment, that’s all I’m willing to say about either of those two delicate subjects.)

Until things start turning around here, I’m just hunkering down…counting down my last days as a surgical resident. For the record, I have 3 days left until I should be done and 24 until I’ll actually be done (when one takes into consideration the 3 weeks that I have to make up for the time I took off to be with my family in March). I’ve been at this for seven years…48 weeks out of every year…80+ hours every week…so it’s safe to say that when it comes to performing surgery, I’ve established a way of doing things that is my own. And that’s partly what residency is about…you watch how everyone else does an appendectomy and then you decide which way you like best and you do it that way. (For instance, I learned early on in residency that using your bare hands to extract the appendix Mortal Kombat Style wasn’t the most effective. Nor did it adhere to the strict sterile procedure code followed in the OR. Whoopsies!) After participating in so many different operations with so many different surgeons, your own personal style is born out of picking and choosing the techniques you like and abandoning the ones you don’t. And sometimes, your style is born from watching how they do it on Grey’s Anatomy.¹

So there I am. In my seventh year of residency. Performing a laparascopic cholecystectomy. With an attending surgeon who I suspect (based on the fact that she shrinks annually and now measures roughly nine inches tall and weighs about as much as my left thigh) is older than the practice of surgery itself and who, while operating, refers to organs as if they were likable puppet characters in Mr. Rodger’s back yard (ex: Ooh, let’s not mess with Mr. Liver, We don’t want to upset Ms. Pancreas, Miss Jejunum likes to be handled gently!) which, for the record, is annoying. (Seriously. Did I want to be Mr. Rogers’ neighbor in the 80′s? No. Do I want to be my attending’s now? Hell. No.) So there I am, grasping Mr. Gallbladder while gingerly dissecting out Ms. Cystic Duct, taking special care not to damage Mr. Common Bile Duct or accidentally avulse Miss Cystic Artery when I get frustrated that the dissecting instrument I’m working with isn’t the kind that rotates, thus forcing me to awkwardly rotate my right wrist (one that I injured a few years ago and, since, try to avoid re-injuring). So I ask the scrub nurse for a rotating instrument. And my attending says, “I feel awkward having to point this out to you at this stage in your training, but that’s what you have wrists for.”

Oh. No. She. Didn’t. Yes she did. So, slowly and calmly, I removed the non-rotating instrument from the laparascopic port and, with the power and precision of a samurai swordsman that’s been training for roughly 80+ hours a week, 48 weeks out of the year for, say…SEVEN YEARS, I inserted it under direct visualization (an important principle in laparoscopy!) up into my attending’s Mr. Rectum, lifting all 82 lbs of her up onto the instrument, and spun her around by rotating my wrist..all the while, thanking her for reacquainting me with that joint that I never TRULY appreciated between my forearm and my hand. All in the span of a few seconds. In my mind.

Is my lemonade ready yet? Let’s throw some vodka in there…my wrist hurts.

1. Just fucking with you. It’s the show ER that taught me all my best surgical techniques…Grey’s Anatomy just taught me how to bag & bang a good looking attending.²
2. Just kidding, Husband!

Only because “phone a friend” wasn’t an option

Published February 1, 2010 blogishness Leave a Comment
Tags: residency

So in an effort to get this here blog back up and running, I’ve got a few blog posts simmering on various back burners. A 2009 wrap up, for instance. That one’s bound to be a goodie seeing as how I just ADORED 2009. (And by adored I mean, absafuckinglutely hated. I didn’t care for it, is what I’m saying. Just to be clear.) Then there’s the blog post about the 3 week Argentina/Antarctica trip that The Brit and I got back from last week. That one’ll be great too because it involves steak dinners, tango, hookers, a true Scottsman, penguins, a Ukrainian with a satellite phone, and a pirate. Maybe there weren’t hookers. And perhaps there wasn’t a pirate. But I guess we’ll just have to see how that one turns out.

There are a few other blog posts in their nascency but let’s not get any big ideas.

I’d have churned out some solid writing by now if I hadn’t spent my whole last week studying for my last ABSITE ever. (There goes my career getting in the way of my blogging again. The nerve.) American Board of Surgery In-Training Examination, for those of you not tormented by it annually. It’s a 5-hour, 220 question multiple choice exam that every surgical resident in the US has to take the last Saturday of every January. And the questions are not unlike the example question I’ve cut and pasted below (straight out of one of my review books, like verbatim):

A 25 year old woman presents to the emergency room with a dubiously vague set of physical complaints and all you have at your disposal are a dull meat cleaver, some Novocain (that’s expired), and an old boom box playing Journey’s Greatest Hits album on repeat. Oh, and you haven’t slept in roughly 30 hours. What is the next best step in the management of this patient?

a) Call the OR and have them prep the patient for an emergent craniotomy

b) Start an IV with an old pen (that you dug out of your lab coat pocket) and some tap water

c) Attach the defibrillator, yell “CLEAR!!” and then give her a good 400 joules (because you suspect that’s what they’d do on Grey’s Anatomy)

d) Administer the Novocain rectally as it will be rapidly absorbed by the rectal mucosa (keep in mind you will have to do this without lube, for there isn’t any)

e) Run screaming from the hospital

Clearly, one needs to prepare for an exam like this. And prepare I did. Aside from the fact that my upstairs neighbor (who’s normally a keep to himself, quiet kind of guy) picked this last week to invite a whole gaggle of children over (true) and conduct a long, and painfully taxing series of tap dancing lessons on his surprisingly acoustic hard wood floors (partly true, the acoustic hard wood floors part), it was a nice solid week of uninterrupted studying. I’m sure I totally nailed the exam. I picked answer choice “e” a lot.

32 reasons I love The Brit

Published January 25, 2010 hands off/he's mine 6 Comments
Tags: husband

1. The dimples.

2. He was undeterred in his quest to have the Star Wars theme song played at our wedding. The organist played it during communion. (Thank God I’d made it clear that lightsabers had to be checked at the cathedral doors.)

3. The first time he made me dinner, he made Molten lava chocolate cake for dessert. I rest my case.

4. He made me ricotta cheese pancakes and mimosas on valentine’s day morning last year after I’d arrived home from a 24 hour shift. I NOW rest my case. (No I don’t.)

5. He’s generous.

6. He’s on the board of a nonprofit that strives to achieve worldwide literacy which, and I still stand by this, makes him like Mother Teresa, only with a penis. (And a lot sexier.)

7. The British accent. (He says the word “garage” like “carriage” with a “g” instead of the “c” and it’s still cute.)

8. He’s entirely too reasonable. Which can be annoying. But it’s probably the main reason we argue very infrequently. (We only argue about his reasonableness.)

9. He likes to snuggle.

10. Lazy is not in his lexicon.

11. He has a strong work ethic. (See #10.)

12. He’s honest. (And thus he oftentimes honestly sticks his foot in his mouth.) (Which can be entertaining.)

13. He doesn’t believe in compromise. He believes in collaboration. (He has a graph for that, ask him to draw it for you.)

14. Sometimes, when I’m on call at the hospital, he comes to have dinner with me.

15. He takes amazing pictures.

16. He loves throwing parties.

17. He loves to travel and keeps a list in his passport book of all the countries he’s been to (40 countries, all 7 continents).

18. When he travels, he tries the deep-fried battered beer larvae & the grilled sparrow on a stick from the street vendors.

19. He NEVER gets sick and swears that it’s because he eats shit stuff off the floor. (Or from street vendors in foreign countries. Same difference.)

20. When he doesn’t know the lyrics to songs, he makes them up. Case in point: Elvis Costello’s Everyday I write the book becomes “Everyday I ride the bus.”

21. He’s a thoughtful gift-giver and loves orchestrating grand surprises. (Exhibit A: His Crazy Marriage Proposal.)

22. He loves my job and is genuinely interested in hearing about my work day.

23. He’s never upset when I’m late for something. (Mostly because he’s always late. But also because, as he says, he always has a million things to do while he waits for me. See #10 again.)

24. He knows all the vendors in our little neighborhood on a first name basis.

25. He learned how to dance salsa when we started dating and then showed his moves in front of all our friends and family and a live Cuban salsa band at our wedding reception.

26. He can strike up a conversation with anyone, anywhere, anytime about anything. (Silence is not in his lexicon either.)

27. He loves a good quote and you can bet that for every major occasion he’s got a quote ready to recite.

28. He has a good relationship with his mum.

29. He has a good relationship with my Mamacusa.

30. He admits his mistakes and apologizes.

31. That being said, he’s an unapologetic flatulator.

32. He’s a happy person, and his happiness is contagious.

Happy birthday, Dear Brit. If and when we have kids, I’d be perfectly happy and proud if they’re all just like you. Love you.

knock, knock?

Published January 25, 2010 blogishness 2 Comments

I just dusted the cobwebs off of my wordpress account and am comforted to see that, despite the fact that I haven’t written in a billion years, I still have a healthy following. This is entirely due to the fact that google searches for savory topics like “boobies” and “gouda” still lead people here, but hey, who’s judging? Hello, Readers To Whom This Applies! Welcome.

If any of you others are still out there, I know I’ve said I was going to start writing again, and I don’t mean to be a blog-tease, but I’ll say it again. Really going to try this time as it makes me happy and I miss doing it. Good luck to me! Will start with a Birthday post to my dear Brit.

Hope y’all’s new year is off to a good start!

No Method, Just Madness

I’m still holding out for the impromptu dancing in the streets though

And I STILL got a letter of recommendation out of that guy!

Screw it, we might as well peel potatoes in the shower now

I won’t start getting panicky until I hit my early late 30’s

Add that to the list of things that med school was good for

Yeah, I can amputate that for you

Aaaaaand, she’s back. Again. Now with new and improved lemonade.

Only because “phone a friend” wasn’t an option

32 reasons I love The Brit

knock, knock?

la cubana gringa’s recent madness

madness forgiven, not forgotten

a

la cubana gringa's maddest

madness other than my own

Hark!

worldwide madness!!