Why I love the Onion (Part II)

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/struggling_mets_combine_to_form

A little help from my friends

Anyone got any suggestions? I got a flat while riding last week. I changed the tube and rode a total of about 5 miles before I got a flat on the way home from work today (thank goodness, not in traffic).
Any suggestions? Do I need new tires or is this just lousy luck? I know nothing about bike maintenance and the majority of bike shops around here are very snooty. The Chuddley Cannondale needs your help!

My job

Unfortunately, since I don't yet have any children or have the time or money to travel a lot, my blogs are all pretty boring. Why is that you ask? Well, that is because I am a resident. Specifically, I am an orthopaedic surgeon in training. I finished med school in 2004, wasn't able to find a job in ortho my first year out, and took a position as a general surgery resident in Chicago. It sucked. I worked a ton and was barely able to enjoy the year in a great city (as an example, I had exactly 4 2-day weekends off in 1 year, ugh). After that, I moved to Philadelphia to begin work in my true love, orthopaedic surgery.

So what is it that I do all day? Well here's a quick rundown of a typical day:
5:45 - 6:30 (or so): meet with the resident on call from the night before and go over x-rays, then round (check on) all of our patients in the hospital
6:30-7:30 : conference in which we go over a topic assigned for the day (this requires reading about 40-50 pages of text book the night before)
7:30 - ? : Operate. This may be several short cases or just one really long and complicated one (for example, we fixed the right humerus and three fingers on a 350lb patient. That took 10 hours.) Once or twice a week, I may be in clinic seeing patients who we operated on previously (taking out stitches, checking follow-up x rays, etc)
Whenever the OR is complete for the day, the team meets again and goes over the things that have happened during the day: new consults, problems with patients, and who went home. This may happen at 5 pm or 9 pm. After that, the person on call takes over care of all the orthopaedic patients. Basically, he or she is in charge of the patients on the floor, the OR, and the ER. Sometimes all three blow up at once, and that sucks. The person on call then usually gets to leave the next morning after conference, meaning a 26 or so hour shift with possibly no sleep (yuck).

It's actually a great job, though. I went into ortho because I love surgery ( and power tools), love helping people get their mobility back, and I am not so good at treating seriously ill people. I just can't work at a job where most of my patients won't get better.

Here is some of my handiwork! On the left is a lady who fell off her bike and broke her elbow. On the right is a dude that got shot in the leg during a robbery (please note all identifying factors have been removed for patient privacy).

Here are some of the dumber things I've heard as a resident (or student) the past 9 years:

"Yeah, she had SIDS twice as a baby"- A patient's mother, trying to explain to us why her daughter had a slight speech impediment. Apparently, our patient was a zombie.

"well, I couldn't afford my blood pressure meds anymore" - A kindly grandma explaining to us why her blood pressure was in the critical range. Became a little awkward when her lab tests came back positive for cocaine. Guess we know where all of her money went.

Various stupid ways of breaking things:
The patient who jumped off the Ben Franklin Bridge and straddled a guardrail on I-95 in the fall. He broke a lot of things, especially his manly parts.

A patient who was "Stoofing" his neighbor's wife. Broke both ankles jumping out the window when the husband came home.

The lady who broke her fibula while trying to jump on a chair to avoid a cockroach.

Anyone riding a motorcycle.


A med student asked me how you can tell different residents apart. My reply: medicine residents put their stethoscopes around their necks (aka "flea collars"), surgical residents put them in their pockets, and ortho residents put them on ebay.

That's me on the left!

I am a bad blogger...

Sorry, nutty busy with work the past few weeks. Here are a few things I've been meaning to write about but haven't sat down to do.
1. Herbal Essences shout out: According to a snippet I read in Vogue today, I am using the number one selling shampoo in the Little Rock, AR Walmart (the article also listed the number one sellers at different salons across the country). So what does this mean? Beats me. I love the stuff and have been using it exclusively for 14 years. Not only is it cheap, but it smells nice. My friend Ben who sat behind me in Mrs. Goldberg's senior English class would always have fruity-smelling dreams thanks to my hair, which was usually wet from morning swim practice. And my hair stylist says my hair is nice and healthy. Eat that, expensive snooty shampoos!

2. The Election: I am nearly sick to my stomach thinking that the GOP may pull off this Palin piece of crap. She's about as qualified as I am to be vice-president (except the whole 35 thing), but I think Biden will whip her in the debates. Although, the media have already begun lowering expectations for her (similar to the way they did with Bush in '04 (oh my, he was able to use complete sentences!)). She'll also get the MILF vote from college frat boys.
I also wonder about people who vote on a one-issue stance, like fairly liberal people who vote conservative just because they are very pro-life. I'm actually okay with this, because no one candidate will meet all of your criteria. I'm pro-tort reform, and that's a very conservative stance in general, but dang it, I have to be able to afford to practice. However, my number one issue that I vote along has to be the environment, and I could never, ever vote for a candidate whose solution to the energy crisis is to drill for more oil. Oil is a dying technology and should be abandoned ASAP, not used to destroy more natural environment just to prolong the inevitable.

3. Went to the Red Bull Soapbox Race in Manayunk last weekend. Had a great time, especially since tropical storm Hannah dumped about 6 inches of rain while we were there. Favorite racers were the Nintendo-mobile, the Cheesesteak Chariot, and the whack-a-mole-bile. We used to live on the steepest part of the hill, so it was nice to have some fun back in the old neighborhood. Please see Darren's blog for more details.

Mayor Nutter and the Cheesesteak Chariot!