Family Medicine: Researching

I'm now officially halfway done with family medicine, and I'd like to think that I learned something useful in my last three weeks at the clinic (hospital week doesn't count). If there's anything that I come across that I don't know, Dr. RR says, "Look it up." Case in point: today I got this eight-month-old infant who had a fever five days ago and broke out into a fine lace-like rash all over her body yesterday. I didn't know what it was, so I consulted Dr. RR's dermatology textbook (which I've become good friends with whenever I have to look up topics like pityriasis rosea, scabies, etc.) Sometimes I have no clue what I'm looking for, but for this rash I struck gold: roseola. Hopefully Dr. RR doesn't think I'm a total idiot (sometimes I have trouble distinguishing between a URI and allergies).

We had several follow-up patients from Friday come to see us. One was a 10-year-old kid s/p appendectomy who developed a fever 4 days after his surgery (he turned out to have lower lobe pneumonia). What struck us all as insane was that the nurse at the pediatric hospital gave him a shot of Rocephin just above his hip, rather than in the upper outer quadrant of the buttock as you're supposed to. Was it any wonder he had numbness along his entire left side where the injection went in? (Dr. RR suspected that it injured his latissimus dorsi) Thankfully he's doing better now (though I couldn't pick up the crackles in his lungs on the first try). Another patient had severe hip pain and couldn't even walk so we sent her to the ER. Fortunately she didn't have a hip fracture, and after some methylprednisolone her pain was much more bearable.

I drove to school during lunch to check my email and ran into Mike, my former lab partner. He told me he plans to apply for ophthalmology. That's a good speciality to go into =)