ER: Day Four

The ER started out slow once again, but I bounced around from Martel to Gina depending on who had a more interesting case. One was a nine-year-old boy who had a 3cm deep laceration on his leg; I got to watch Martel suture him (it took 8 stitches). Another was a 3 year old girl with an abscess being raised by a single dad, and she had lots of questions about mommies. She asked me if I had a mommy, where my mommy lived, and whether or not my rabbit (I showed her a picture of Pearl) had a mommy. For some reason that just made me sad.

We had two lectures today: one at noon about sepsis and fever with the chief residents, and one at four with the pediatric neurologist about ethics in medicine. The ethics cases we discussed were lots more interesting than the ethics we discussed back in school. Sam, the 3rd year resident who supervised me once during call, stopped by to see who Sharon was (she's on call today), and he regretted not staying and listening to Dr. D's lecture as well.

The ER was empty at 4:00 when I left for lecture, but when I got back at 6:00 (after dinner), there were five charts along the wall waiting to be seen and lots more to come. Time to put the med student to work! I had time to see two patients before my shift ended: an earache (pretty common these days) and a sore throat (lots of ulcers in the mouth; possibly herpangina). The girl with the herpangina also had a yeast infection so we had to get that cultured; I'm just glad the attending didn't have to do a pelvic on her. All the attendings today were female, which was a nice change since they tend to be friendlier. Especially since one of them was another graduate from my school =)

I have the day off tomorrow! Hopefully it'll be put to studying.