Family Medicine: Books vs Real Life

My assignment yesterday for Dr. RR was to look up differential diagnoses for RUQ and LLQ abdominal pain, and the list was long. But surprisingly, we got a few patients today who had abdominal pain, and it was my job to try to figure out what it was. One lady had chronic RUQ pain for years even though she had her gallbladder removed; the only thing to do for her was medical management. Another woman came in with frequent urination and abdominal pain in her LLQ, RLQ, and side. She had no history of strenuous activity, and when her UA came back negative, I really had no clue what to think. Later Dr. RR went and talked to her more in depth and was able to find that the main pain was the pain in the LLQ, which made everything suspicious for diverticulitis. To treat diverticulitis: clear liquid diet and antibiotics. *sigh* Dr. RR probably thinks I'm an idiot. He's already seen two of my three OSCEs and said that while I don't give the impression that I'm "green" (i.e. I don't have in the interview skills of a first year), there's several things I need to work on. I went ahead and apologized for being soft spoken on the CD since I had strep that week, but later I wanted to kick myself for finding excuses for a less-than-stellar OSCE. I never win.