My Surreal Experience In Medicine

I'm a family doc using my blog to understand how I think about medicine and my patients. All patient stories are fictional confabulations of my experience. All have been changed significantly. This song is NOT about you. No...

[thelatestkate]

April 2021 Illustrations ヽ(• ‿ •)ノ

[lunah-goodbye]

x

[whitepeopletwitter]

[cranquis]

PREACH IT!!!

Co-signed,

A frustrated urgent care doctor

[wayfaringmd]

Also from a family doctor who has real work to attend to.

[surrealmeds]

Using a negative COVID test to prevent the spread of the virus is like using a negative pregnancy test to prevent having a baby. 

[whitepeopletwitter]

[cranquis]

PREACH IT!!!

Co-signed,

A frustrated urgent care doctor

[wayfaringmd]

Also from a family doctor who has real work to attend to.

[surrealmeds]

Using a negative COVID test as a way to prevent spread is the same as using a negative pregnancy test to prevent having a kid. 

[amy-santiagos]

[thequantumqueer]

[ms-demeanor]

"I loved her to the point of invention" is extremely fucking raw and I adore it.

[thetrippytrip]

We should be more pro-active or we’ll see more of such sad fates of honest people.

[fluffmugger]

And the utterly ironic thing is I’ve seen repeated tumblr posts of that iconic photo absolutely slagging the shit out of Peter Norman as “lol white guy so uncomfortable”   “Why the fuck isn’t he supporting them”, etc etc.

[aqueercreative]

As an Australian this post surprised me. I knew none of the above.

[themerrywriter-deactivated20200]

People need to learn this shit so they can emulate it - this is what it means to stand in solidarity with people; it tends to be a difficult, quiet thing that costs you, and yet it’s the right thing to do. 

[surrealmeds]

secrets

Sunday morning coffee and postsecret used to be my favourite ritual. Since I started hearing secrets all week in my office, my heart needs Sundays to recover from the pain I’ve helped everyone else heal from. I need to remind myself that I get some time too. I miss being surprised by what we do to each other.  

[decembersoul]

Libraries with a sense of humour.

[surrealmeds]

false positive

Whenever I check a patient’s pupils for reactivity, I remember a gentleman from my training. 

I was paged by a nurse because she had noted that one of his pupils was fixed and dilated. He was palliative, but a stroke would be a big change for him. I was on call for the weekend, so I was covering all the patients, even the ones I didn’t know. 

I went to examine the patient. His wife was at his bedside and asked what I was looking for. “Your husband’s nurse noticed a change in his neurological responses so I wanted to see how he is doing.”

“Oh. Are you looking at his left eye?”

“Yes...”

“Because that’s the false one.”

She was so kind and appreciated that her husband’s nurse was looking out for him. She explained the circumstances of his losing his eye. 

I learned to ask if things are normal for patients even though they may seem abnormal to me. I appreciated her generosity in assuming we were caring for her loved one rather than that we were incompetent for not having his entire medical history memorized. I loved that the nurse, who was at the beginning of her career, wasn’t afraid to ask for help when she noticed something abnormal. 

It was a lovely example of how a caring patient interaction should go. 

[andallshallbewell]

[rosalitadiazz-deactivated202003]

[fontencomble]

De chair, de sang de sutures, “ Eve” - Broderie sur couverture de déménageur

[hafael-archive]

[unicornempire]

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMHm!

[surrealmeds]

Many of the patients we have in hospital right now are quite demented. MOCAs are about 5 on average. It’s something. 

2 were sitting with each other at the nurse’s station. One repeats the same phrases over and over again, “What’s your name?” or screams out for no apparent reason, and the other usually speaks in word salad. 

The first screamed, as he does. The second looked at him and very loudly said MEOW!

The first stopped mid-scream, mouth hanging open. The second returned to her pudding. 

And I laughed until I snorted coffee out my nose. 

[surrealmeds]

Egosurfing

I do this thing. 

It’s embarrassing af. 

When a patient dies that I have been caring for, I check their obituary. I want to see if my team gets recognition; if our hospital or hospice are given donations. 

It’s a bit arrogant, but I need to know that what help I was able to give was appreciated. When my patient dies, I worry about how their family is doing, how the grief process is affecting them. I hope that they felt that I did everything for them that I could. It’s a way for me to check in on them one last time. 

Please don’t judge too harshly. 

[thehmn]

It has come to my attention that most people don’t know this about Simon Pegg and Nick Frost and that’s a goddamn crime against humanity.

Back when they were young and poor they had to share a single person bed for nine months. As Pegg put it, they started out sleeping head to feet, but after kicking each other in the face one too many times they started sleeping head to head. It wasn’t long after that that they gave up on being macho “no touchy” dudes and just snuggled up during bedtime. In the morning they “couldn’t tell where one began and the other ended”.

That’s why they’re so cuddly today. They’re so physically close that it worried Frost’s fiance at the time and she asked them to never share a bed again after she got married to Frost. The night before the wedding Frost wasn’t allowed to see her anyway, so Pegg dropped by his house so they could share a bed one last time (Frost since got a divorce though). Pegg’s wife has no objections to any of this. If it’s important to her hubby, who is she to judge.

Pegg recommend all male friends to try sharing a bed. If it turns out you want to fuck each other, great, you’re going to have a lot of fun. If you don’t want to fuck each other, well, then nothing happens anyway.

(Side note: That’s also why there’s so many photos of Edgar Wright cuddling up to various guys. He learned that from Pegg and Frost. They created a cuddle monster that can’t be stopped)

[surrealmeds]

Dear B,

Happy Birthday Sweetie. 

  This has been a long year. There hasn’t been a day that I haven’t thought of you. I’ll see something pink or purple, a bunny, a baby. I’ll be talking to a patient who is going through their own grief or is pregnant. You are always close to the top of my mind. 

  Because you’ve been so important to me, I’ve changed. I didn’t expect this. You see, the work I do has made my heart cold and closed. I’ve stopped believing in good in the world because I keep seeing the worst of people. I truly stopped believing in love. To me, it was a lot of hype for something that just doesn’t exist. 

  But B, I’ve loved you since I knew you existed. You melted my heart by making your mother and father glow. I knew that you were going to do great things in your life. I just didn’t know that you were going to do so much so quickly or that your life was going to be so short. My heart has felt broken since I found out that you and I were never going to meet, and it breaks again day after day. I wasn’t able to cry for years because my heart had hidden in a cave to protect itself, but since I saw the photo of your beautiful face I am crying rivers. The pain has made me so very angry, but has also helped my heart to open up to other people. The love that you’ve showed me actually exists is being shared. You’ve made me a better person and a better doctor. 

  I am still so angry, and I know that this is because I have been completely helpless in making it possible for you to be here to celebrate this birthday, I’m helpless in easing your parents’ pain.  I feel like medicine has failed me. I feel like I have failed you and your mother. One of the biggest reasons I decided to become a doctor was so that I could keep my family safe and well. I feel so ashamed that I couldn’t protect you. That shame has kept me hiding, because that’s what shame does. 

  I love you B. 

Your imperfect auntie who is working on being a better person.