Not Really Good

The morning did not start out good. Although I was on call yesterday and expected to present my case at morning report, my housemates told me that there was no morning report today because almost all the residents had an inpatient exam to take (therefore, no one would be there) I listened to them and got breakfast with Anita and Elizabeth, but I kept having a nagging feeling that I should be at the conference room. Finally I couldn't take it anymore and ran to the conference room to see if there was morning report. Sure enough, my worst fears were confirmed: morning report was happening, and I was to present my case in a few minutes!

The worst part of it (for me) was that I had left my notes on the inpatient floors and had not brought them to breakfast with me, so I was empty-handed and expected to present! So when my turn came, I took a deep breath and recited what I remembered from the chart, and though I covered a few major details, I knew I'd left out more. When it was over, the attendings didn't ask questions except for the dimensions of the stenosis, and I sat down feeling very upset with myself. Later I apologized to my Sam, my senior resident, and the attending for being late and unprepared, but they assured me that I did very well. Sam said that he was impressed that I was able to remember so much from memory, but he did say that if I ever felt uncomfortable presenting, he'd do it for me (nice offer, except I won't be on call with him again). Myriah was the only med student who attended morning report, and she said I did great. The attending even said that my presentation was one of the better ones that morning. That made me feel better, because he's not the type of person who'd give false praise.

The floors were dead in the afternoon (only one new patient, whom the residents took care of). I kept tabs on my pneumonia patient from yesterday. Her parents were nowhere to be found for most of the afternoon so she was crying nonstop for a while. I ended up visiting her twice, giving her toys or letting her listen to classical music from my PDA (yes, I'm a dork, but why else would I choose a name like crescendo?) to calm her down. After check-out, I went to see my pyloric stenosis baby; his PFO (patent foramen ovale) murmur was cleared as harmless and he was scheduled for surgery 30 minutes after my visit. I wished the grandmother a good outcome with the surgery. "I have faith," was her simple reply.