Slamming it out

One of the few true things I've learned about life is that it goes on with or without you...



I don't know how to embed music, so joe, for some reason I'd like to have rock of ages in the background as you read this entry.

I've had kind of a crazy month. First off, I'd like to apologize to anyone that I didn't call or email back, which is pretty much everyone. I'm sorry.

I spent the better part of september on my ENT rotation. Thankfully it was a chill rotation. Just a couple interesting things that happened during that rotation.

1. I spent a lot of time working on patients with hearing loss. The most common side effect of hearing loss is tinnitus, a high pitched buzzing sound. I asked an old lady if she heard noises. She told me that she heard voices. hmm...so i asked her again if she heard noises. Nope...just the voices. Shit. Turn out she was apeshit out of her mind. She heard voices telling her to kill her grandchildren, but she didn't have much time to chat with me because she needed to go pick up her grandchildren...we took a little walk down to the pscyh ER.

2. I was consulted on a patient in AML/CML blast crisis. I scoped her nose and saw a lot of charred black tissue. We had to take a biopsy...I swear, it would have been better if she could scream. She looked like she was screaming for her life, but all I could hear was her raspy breath praying for death and asking us to stop the biopsy. All I could do was hold her down as my resident proceded to rip her septum out of her nose. The biopsy came back mucormycosis - badness. Seriously, a part of me dies a little bit each day in surgery.

3. On my last week, one of my co-interns got called up to the OR at midnight. It turns out that the anesthesiologist had passed out during the case and stopped breathing. A nice dose of narcan brought him back. Classic drug addict anesthesiologist. Once he realized what had happened, he just cried throughout the rest of the night. Poor kid, but seriously, grow some balls.

4. On my last day on ENT, I was irrigating out some upper lip pus. The patient started bleeding profusely. It all went into his mouth, so of course, he decided to spit a mouthful of blood into my face and my eyes. It seriously took a conscious effort to not beat the crap out of this guy. So I've become another statistic...luckily his blood came back HIV and hep C negative. whew...

Now I guess it's the meat of this entry. My last week on ENT was one of the worst weeks I've had in a long time. I know it was a million times worse for people who were more closely involved. My roommate from medical school committed suicide. He just put on a bow-tie, wrote his last good-byes and let go. I loved that kid. He was my little brother, but we weren't as close as I wished we could've been. Especially during my last year of med school while I was living it up, he was struggling to get by. Like any other korean man, I buried all of my feeling deep down, where they belong. I don't remember the last time I've cried in my life...maybe while watching rocky balboa. Either way, it was a bit too much. After the shock wore off, I spent the greater part of the week working myself into the ground during the day and torturing myself all night every night. Everyone that send words of support - ags, lonecoyote, hibiscus, rabbit, teresa and countless others. Seriously, thanks. It was really nice to hear from y'alls. Just sad it was under such unfortunate circumstances. Anyhow, ever since the ceremony, I've been sleeping like a baby. Here are a few of my favorite times with the kid.

1. Playing nba live late night when we should've been studying for finals. He'd work me with the heat, saying the whole time "dwayne wade is so sexy." There are variations on this. Late night fifa, late night street fighter II, late night midnight club racing the batmobile - then a break to KFC, arby's, del taco, la fiesta, whatever.

2. After I broke up with mo during 2nd year, he took me out to meet some of his friends. The first club we went to was soga's. By the time I got there, he got kicked out of the club because he kept fighting with the bouncer to stamp his arm, despite the fact that he already had one. Then we went to sophia's. When the bouncer asked for ID, he pulled out his von's card, credit card, everyone but his license. The bouncer took pity and let him in...that is, until he walked into the bouncer's chest. Then he pulled out $5 to bribe the bouncer. Finally, we ended up at pasta where there it was completely empty except 2 girls getting down with their badass selves. He made me dance with them...she wasn't interested. He tried to swing dance to gangster hip-hop...that was awesome.

countless other memories...good times bro.

This past week I've started on the hepatobiliary surgery service. I've been going in at 3am to pre-round on the patients on the list, plus consults. We slam out rounds, lots of big surgeries. Operate from 7-6pmish. Then we round and I take care of consults. I've been getting out around 8ish. Call nights are brutal because we cover for 5 other services - 2 colorectal, thoracic foregut, tumor/endocrine, and vascular surgery. Luckily, I've been busting my ass and have been on my game.

It's gonna be a long 6 years homie.

-bender