Coming At You Like A Spider Monkey

Being back at the hospital for my clinical rotation has been pretty interesting so far. Somehow over the past couple of years, I've learned how to shoot some x-rays, so the exams aren't nearly as difficult for me or my classmates to perform. I imagined that upon our return for this, our last semester, that these exams would still be as difficult as they had been, but they're actually getting to be fairly easy for us to do.

Another interesting part about being in the hospital for 8 hours a day is that there are lots of people around you that know stuff; the sort of stuff that I find myself wondering about. I can usually find someone that knows something about these curiosities of mine. The funny thing about being a little older and having the background that I've got as a newspaper photojournalist is that I have no fear whatsoever of approaching complete strangers and asking them questions. For fifteen years, this was my job. Being in a hospital and having a roving and curious mind allows me access to some pretty smart people and I just don't think that they've encountered many people that disregard some of the social boundaries that hospitals allow to exist.

I found this youngish looking fellow a few days ago watching one of our radiologists performing a shoulder arthrogram on a patient. Since I've firmly decided to not pursue a career in radiography, I felt like this was my chance to harangue a med student and gain some insight from someone in the know. So I came at this poor guy like a spider monkey. “Are you a new radiology resident?” “No, a medical student huh?” “What school.” “Nice, I got my undergrad there and I'm thinking of applying to medical school there in a year or so, how do you like it?” “Would you go to medical school again if you know what you know now about it?” …...Suffice it to say, I kept coming at him with questions and they were all great ones that I had wanted to ask some med student, he just happened to be the first to cross my path. Poor guy, he was just taking it easy in radiology and this crazed x-ray student just badgered him for 20 minutes about shit that he's still mulling over. He was a nice enough guy, but his social skills were a little bit off. He became a little uncomfortable in his own skin when he realized that I wasn't impressed with him. Odd, I thought.

I came at the radiologists a little bit like a spider monkey too, but I'm trying to rein it in a little with those guys, 'cause I've got to actually work with them for the next few months. A couple of them I actually got to stop and ponder some of the questions I was asking. It's sort of interesting to talk with some of these guys because it's not a one sided conversation for me like it can be when I talk with other people I know about medicine. They can contribute to a conversation as it evolves, while some people, when I talk to them about this sort of stuff, just sort of reach their limit of knowledge and end up learning more from me than I can from them. I found it interesting that one of the neuroradiologists initially chuckled and off-handedly remarked that I should “get out now” when I told him that I was going to pursue a career as a physician. That's the same thing the x-ray techs told all of us students during our first week of clinicals almost two years ago. Then, it was virtually all of the tech's that told us that. Here, it was just this humorous rad and I think he immediately regretted his off-hand comment. I wasn't offended about it, I think he was alluding to all the hard work that went into the enterprise. He was very frank and thoughtful about talking with me about some of the games that you have to play to distinguish yourself from your peers. He mentioned that those games and the distinguishing efforts don't stop once you get into medical school. Those things continue.

I inflicted myself on this really nice neurologist and a whole office full of neurology technologists that do the EKG's. I really wanted to know why a patient would have bilateral pupils that were not circular. This patients pupils took on a key-hole look. Roughly south, on her pupil is where the irregularity began and the round part swooped down abruptly and then back up abruptly for a period of about 3 mm. It looked very odd and it's been on my mind about what could cause something like that. I don't care really all that much, I just want to know how something like that could happen. Morbid obesity, diabetic ulcers on her lover extermeties, congestive heart failure, COPD, but she looked like she might have a genetic neurologic deficiency. My physiology teacher's on the case, my clinical instructor, the neurologist, a couple of radiology nurses, they're all on the case, but none of this could happen if I didn't have access to these people.

I plan on inflicting myself on some more poor souls soon, but I keep trying to rein in the spider monkey effect.