Continued from Part 2...
17:07 - The attending bought us dinner! Yay free food. Here's some wisdom he dropped on us over dinner: "A wise man doesn't learn everything from personal experience." Or, put another way: learn from other people's mistakes too.
I was called a politician by one of the residents. Seriously upset by this. I guess I should dial back the niceties and mix in a bit more sarcasm, not that I'd ever be able to compete with these residents' acerbic jabs back and forth.
18:35 - While working on the paperwork for my family medicine rotation that starts in three weeks (it is somehow rivaling the VA's mountain of documents, and that's impressive), I discovered that I have lived at 15 addresses in my 28 years. Man, I move a lot!
19:19 - Finally something to do... and I flub it. I got to draw my first actual patient blood this evening. Though drawing blood is normally not an especially easy task, getting to stick a pregnant lady for your first is like shooting your first arrow with your target being the ground - it's hard to miss. They are often volume overloaded, so their veins are engorged and practically screaming to be stabbed. And even with all of that, I somehow missed and froze. I knew exactly what to do to get in the vein, but was nervous about practicing on a pregnant lady. Thankfully the nurse who was guiding me very graciously jumped in to save me.
Then I screwed up again and didn't retract the needle correctly and spilled a couple drops of blood on my glove. Not the end of the world, but didn't exactly feel like the most talented student. And yet, even then, the nurse calmly and kindly said I did a good job and helped me package the vials to send to the lab. The only upside to all this is that, with these mistakes burned into my memory, I'll screw up less (or at least differently) next time.
To be continued...
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