surreal life, part deux

So this morning we were post-call, which is when we all sit around and talk about the patients we admitted yesterday. We met at the attending's office at 9 after pre-rounding on them all. The formidable Dr. L was there right on time, and she'd brought her dog, Max. A little yappy terrier with a silkie hairdo. Seriously, the dog has nicer hair than I do. He was pretty cute, actually, running around and chasing his tail and barking merrily as we all staggered in with our oversized styrofoam cups of coffee after too little sleep, found seats and started nervously shuffling our papers. H & P (history and physical) forms, the green copy, not the yellow, because Dr. L wants that copy for your presentation. Afterwards you need to switch them out in the chart. Oh, and stickers. Must bring at least two stickers with patient name, DOB and medical record number to hand to Dr. L so that she may affix them to her note. And EKGs for perusal. I was sitting there sweating because my last patient presentation hadn't gone so hot. My patient had a thoracentesis and I was all over the composition of the pleural fluid, bursting at the seams with differential diagnosis of transudates vs exudates (whatever). And I total failed to recognize that this nice old lady was hypothyroid. Oops. Dr. L did not, however, and totally raked me over the coals. Fun! Anyway, I was waiting to discover what blatently obvious thing I'd forgotten THIS time, when little Max the dog comes over for a pat. I obliged and tousled his well-grommed locks. He then proceeded to get very friendly indeed with my leg. I tried to ignore it at first, but I didn't want things to get out of hand (a doggy tease? quel horreur!), so I tried pushing him down with my hand on his floppy-haired head, then I tried pushing him away with my leg. No avail! I wanted to punt the little shit across the room, but figured that would earn me no brownie points and, let's face it, I could really use some. Finally, after far too many agonized minutes, Dr. L said, "Max, what are you doing?" "I don't want to say," I squeaked. Max was scolded but not shamed. He was back for more within 5 minutes.

All I can say is: two more weeks until I'm out of this freak factory (and smack dab into another).