OB-STOP BEING DISCOURAGING, DAMMIT!!!

Yes, I'm pretty psyched to be doing my OB rotation and Major Urban Medical Center...but boy are they ever INVASIVE with their patients! I did TWO straight-caths on one woman in labor (to be honest, the pt. asked me to, since she couldn't feel her bladder what with the epidural turned up so high)...and every time I have spoken to about half the nurses about natural childbirth, they laugh and tell me "oh sweetie, you don't know what you're talking about. The pain is like NOTHING you can imagine! Don't get your hopes up when you have kids someday! You WILL get the epidural!"

This is why patients come in panicked, at 2 centimeters, with the baby floating high, begging for an epidural "before it gets bad". Because we get told we CANNOT POSSIBLY deal with a natural childbirth.

My mom did TWO- myself and my brother. She says yes, it DOES hurt like hell, but being tied down would be WORSE, and anyway, it went faster since she could walk around.

Seriously, what's with tying all the women to the bed with the heart monitors? They're healthy, they're young, WHY DO THEY HAVE TO LIE THERE? Is the world going to END because we cannot see everything for 10 minutes? Is it?

Although I'm gaining a LOT of experience fast, this place makes me NEVER want to have kids- it seems a lot like they torture women for the hell of it.

Time Flies When You're Up To Your Eyeballs in Work!

So spring break FLEW by! I have an interview for the Job Of My Dreams next thursday, it's an ER internship up in Vermont (i really really really want it).

I also had my first day at Really Big Philadelphia Urban Medical Center for OB. It was pretty cool, but I have a strong (STRONG) feeling I'm going to spend a lot of time biting my tongue about unnecessary interventions into uncomplicated labor.

On the bright side, we apparently get lots of really "interesting" cases, and when I said that ED was my dream job, she said "well by all means, if someone codes, or we get a hemorrhage, jump right in and work them!". This is the very first time an instructor has given me blanket permission to assist in an emergency beyond "push the help button". I mean, a hemorrhage, as far as we students are concerned, mostly means "push the help button with one hand, massage the uterus with the other"...but its still a step up.

We did a newborn exam on a baby in the nursery...rather a suprise when we unwrapped him- POLYDACTYLY!!! (SURPRISE! EXTRA FINGERS!) They looked like tiny little cat-toys dangling by skin tags off the distal side of each pinky. VERY cool. This bodes well for the rest of the semester.

OH! and yesterday I found out that i got an EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT PLACEMENT FOR MY LEADERSHIP CLINICAL!!!! WHEEE!!! It's not a trauma center (none were available for placements), but i got one of only 3 spots for the whole year. GO ME!!! The downside: its 12 hours every friday until may. Yeah. My workload just went up again.