Love/Hate

It's that time of the month again...time for things (and people) that piss me off, the Medical Edition! And, because I'm trying to remain positive this year, there will be an equally important Things I Like section.

Things That Piss Me Off
1. When a doctor orders six separate blood tests, and they are tests that need to be done on different Vacutainers of blood, so that I have to give six tubes of blood instead of one. This isn't anyone's fault, per se, it's just one of those things that can't be helped. Also, when the phlebotomist has a hard time finding a vein and rather than WITHDRAWING the needle and trying again, just digs around under the skin...it's an awful feeling. I've drawn blood before, and I've had lots of blood drawn, and it's easier for everyone just to retry.

2. The paper gown. Just when you thought it was impossible for the hospital gown to get any draftier or less comfortable, they've traded in that cloth gown (which, despite being 3 sizes too big, at least provided you with a sense of being somewhat clothed) for one made out of Charmin. No, not even Charmin. Whatever the Aldi brand of toilet paper is, in 1/2 ply.

3. The fact that, despite being gay and despite having been celibate for longer than I care to mention, one of the first several questions any physician will ask me is, "When was your last menstrual period?" Even if I come in for chronic sinusitis. I'm not pregnant, I promise. Or, as I told the X-ray tech the last time I had a chest X-ray, "If I'm pregnant my girlfriend has a lot of explaining to do."

4. That the only medication that has considerably improved my insomnia gives me a hangover effect that keeps me from full consciousness until about noon the next day. During last year's finals, I was 45 minutes late for our Genetics exam because said drug kept me from responding to the alarm. I cycled through 2 anxiety attacks on the way (run!) to class, and got the extreme evil eye from the professor. It's nice to make friends with faculty members who are also in positions of authority within the school at large (ie, if you're going to be late for someone's exam, try not to make it one of the Deans'. Ooops). Thanks, Seroquel!

5. Male gynecologists. I'm sure they're nice people. I know several. I'm probably being sexist. But I don't want a Mormon bartender, I don't want a mechanic who's never driven a car, and I don't want someone without breasts or ovaries examining mine.

Things I like
1. Bandaids with cartoon characters. Call me childish, but Hello Kitty bandages really do make those minor abrasions hurt less.

2. Zyrtec. Can I get a hallelujah from all those with allergies? Zyrtec has made spring and summer enjoyable again. No, I'm not getting paid to say that.

3. Eugenol, or oil of cloves. I had a dry socket (otherwise known as the most painful condition humankind is heir to, outside of childbirth and kidney stones) once, and within seconds of having it packed with eugenol-soaked gauze, the pain was gone. I wanted to kiss the dentist on his big bald head.

4. Ativan. The ultimate anxiolytic, though its usefulness is limited by the fact that it generally leaves me too gorked to perform daily functions. It seems to work as most benzodiazepines do--ie, on the assumption that you can't have a panic attack if you're unconscious.

Learning to laugh at my own stupidity--and Microbes!

So I slept essentially...not at all last night (ok, 5 hours) and that was from 4:30 to 9:30. That may not seem like much of a shortcoming to you late-night IMers and Conan O'Brien watchers (yes, I realize I just sounded like a geriatric patient, and secretly I am a 87 year old woman--you kids quit playing grabass on the lawn!), but I've got me some bipolar disorder, and I need my damn sleep. So I was not running on all however-many cylinders today, as became immediately (or, unfortunately, not-so-immediately) apparent when I went to pick up some essentials at the grocery store today. Never mind that the grocery store is kind of a fraught place for me, or that I have a rough time actually picking things up and putting them in the cart, or that I always feel like I'm in 15 different people's way...beyond all that intrinsic neurosis, I got to the check-out counter FINALLY, and when all was said and done...I didn't have my credit card with me. Got it out of my wallet to do God-knows-what with it and never put it back in, and had all of $7 in cash with me. So I did the whole stammering/turning red/sweating/sympathetic nervous system in overdrive thing, y'know, where you wish the earth would open up and swallow you down to the bowels of hell where at least you could hang out and drink absinthe with Oscar Wilde. So I muttered an apology and all but ran out the front door, my face a color somewhere between "rose" and "carmine" in the Martha Stewart interior decorating palette. Once I was home and finishing the last of a bottle of merlot I could look back at it and laugh, because it is sort of a ridiculous situation for a person who's obsessed with doing everything perfectly and never incoveniencing anyone to find herself in. Maybe I'm learning, little by little, to laugh at my shortcomings--at least those that don't kill anyone (please, please, universe, don't let there be any of the other kind!).
Also, had Microbes today for the first time, and it was so utterly kewl. We got a pack of these Microbe Cards to augment our learning process...like Pokemon or sports trading cards, with images of the infectious fungi, bacteria, viruses, or parasites in question on one side and information (from epidemiology to diagnosis to treatment) on the opposite side. I'm really looking forward to getting together a microbe card playing league..."I play N. gonorrhea!" "I play Cipro!" or "I play Hepatitis C!" "I play interferon!" Gonna be a +3 infectious disease specialist by the end (Note: I have never actually participated in an RPG and thus have no idea what I'm talking about...except for the microbes. I kind of know what I'm talking about there, but only to such an extent that I can sound reasonably intelligent at cocktail parties and probably be very dangerous to actual patients, which is why I'm not yet allowed in the same room with them without an M.D. chaperone).

Syncope is funny. Until it happens to you.

So I fell out during anatomy lab on Monday. I wasn't anywhere near the cadaver--we hadn't even uncovered him yet--and I was just listening to the professor talk about the sympathetic nervous system. It was interesting, enthralling even, so it wasn't like I was short on sleep and fell into a mini-snooze (I was short on sleep, true, but also highly caffeinated...to the point of buzzing, in fact).
I remember what he was talking about--the sensory innervation of the diaphragm, and the tests they do for fallopian tube patency (they inject some air into the uterus, the woman stands up, the air leaks out the openings of the fallopian tubes and impinges on the diaphragm, and the woman sometimes feels a little pain in the region of her shoulders or neck...because the fibers that innervate the diaphragm actually arise at the cervical--read: neck, not the 'downtown' cervix--level. Which is actually good, because it means that at least the fallopian tubes aren't scarred shut, which is a fairly common cause of infertility). I had to sit down. Stood up again, sat down again. Went out into the hall, sweating and nauseous, and prostrated myself (note my cunning use of vocabulary to avoid the lay/lie difficulty--something I still don't have a complete handle on after all my years as what I would consider an English speaker of some facility) on what is probably one of the nastiest floors--make that nastiest surfaces, period--I've ever been privileged to make contact with. So of course one of the professors/lecturers/coursemasters/whatever the hell we're supposed to call them now happened upon me, which was probably good considering the fact that I was horizontal and still felt like I was losing consciousness. Why me, dammit? I'm not especially squeamish (though the bone saw did make me flinch). I'm not some consumptive Victorian who keels over at the first sign of stress or pressure. So what gives?
Anyway, it was an embarrassing albeit unique opportunity to be escorted to and chill on the floor of the prof's office for a few minutes, eat a granola bar, and get my blood sugar up into range (I've decided it was probably an, ahem, glycemic control problem, which is a way of conveying the issue without getting all up in my business). This was the coursemaster who scared the hell out of me at the beginning of the year; I still have a healthy respect-to-fear ratio, since she comes around the lab and fires questions like bullets ("And what's this structure here, just posterior and medial to the thoracic duct?" [Silence, as the table collectively tries to remember what medial means in this context]), but she's also phenomenal at explaining things and was quite nice when she could have just shipped me to student health or something. So there's that. And the fact that I almost wanted to say, when she asked me what was wrong, "I'm either having an exaggerated vagal nerve response to stress, a particularly intractable bout of orthostatic hypotension, or a brief period of hypoglycemia that will probably rectify itself once the epinephrine from talking to you mobilizes the glycogen stores in my liver." Maybe I'm learning some of this stuff after all.