Friday, July 11, 2003

Is a rain storm my punishment for having a half day while the other med students are still on clinic duties? This sucks. So much for sitting by the pool and studying. Oh great, lightning and thunder.
I'm having tons of fun down in Thibodaux. My preceptor is very animated and fun to work with and learn from. I have gone from just doing the subjective part of a SOAP note to doing S, O (objective including a physical exam), and A (assessment) when possible. The P, plan, part I'll probably be doing by the end of the block but for now, I'm content with us just discussing it and him writing it down. His handwriting is very hard to read but he also writes very quickly and talks quickly when he dictates at the hospital. I write slowly and slightly messy but still legibly (the S- I earned in elementary school still holds true for "writes legibly"). But here's the best part: He makes me rewrite things to make them more legible! I can't read his writing for the most part. Last night he had me rewrite the hospital orders for a patient since he needed to change stuff and he said his writing was too sloppy or something like that. Oh and I'm not respecting the aging process when I write small on the prescription pads. Funny since the resident I followed first year said that I needed to write my Rx more sloppy so the pharmacist would believe it was a real Rx. Well, I'm going to watch some tv and read some EKG stuff. By the way, I'm not shopping at my bookstore anymore since I went in today instead of coming home first and the damn store was closed with no reason as to why they closed at 1 pm. And there's a student discount over at the LSU bookstore and so if I need books and don't want to wait for them to come via mail, I'll just go there.
~me~ at 4:13 PM

Monday, July 07, 2003

Today was my first day at the clinic in Thibodaux. I felt kind of dumb since I couldn't remember some things but he was pretty nice about my inabilities. We saw some pretty neat stuff and while the 1st few days was supposed to be observation, on the second patient, I was told to do a follow up on a man with diabetes. Um...can we say moment of panic? It was fine though and so tonight I need to review diabetes and hypertension and the drugs used to treat those since he sees lots of those patients. Someone had an infected sweat gland so I saw the procedure to drain that. Unfortunately, you can't really anesthetize for that so the man was in pain. It was nasty too. If you've ever drained a small wound on your body, multiply the stuff in there times 500...oh yeah! Someone else who had less than stellar prenatal care came in and had no idea why she was there but I'm curious to see what becomes of her baby that was trying to develop under the stress of maternal hyperthyroidism. Oh and I met and did an HPI and physical on a woman who married a Chinese dude and lived on Kauai before moving to Thibodaux. Well, I'm going to eat dinner.
Oh one more thing, I am now to be called either "Girl" (with southern twang), "Cara Girl", or Cara. At least, that's my name as dubbed by my preceptor. Oh and a 10 year old who was almost as tall as me wanted to know if I was a midget. Yep, the fun of family medicine.
~me~ at 7:30 PM

Here's what may be my last name in Kanji


And here's what my middle name may be in hiragana




And why, may you ask I have all this? Well, my friend got bored studying for occupational therapy and found a Kanji site then proceeded to try and figure out the Kanji for our names. The hiragana I remember from a stamp my grandma got me when she went to Japan once. There's some special way of getting the right Kanji for names but Grandma said once that she didn't like hearing about how certain ways of writing characters can mean bad stuff so she never found out the ways to write the middle names of my uncles after her experience with naming my dad.
~me~ at 6:52 PM

Sunday, July 06, 2003

Well, I decided to try this rain-x stuff for my car windows. I had to clean the car though first. It's amazing how dirty the inside surface of the windows get. Almost greasy like. So I cleaned the inside and outside surfaces then put the rain-x on and also bought the rain-x to go in the windshield wiper solution bin. Hopefully that will help. I still need to buy wiper replacements but we'll see how the rain-x helps.
I'm still looking around that the benefits of the zire 71. I found it at $240 from buy.com but the price is only good until the 15th. I probably won't buy it though. If I do buy it, I'm going to wait until next block and just watch the prices. Maybe one will come out without a camera or the music player function since I don't need those on a pda. Now you know why I'm still holding fast to my visor. I guess I'll buy the 5 minute consult since I want it and family medicine doesn't really involve any classmates that I know have it. And this way, i'll have the full functioning product. Maybe I'll find someone who wants to chip in. At the moment, if i sold my visor on ebay, I can get over $120 for it since that's what others are selling theirs for.
I'm watching trading spaces family. Hildi, the one person who doesn't design for kids, is doing the show with 2 kids under 12 and their parents. What a laugh.
~me~ at 6:28 PM