We get many calls from the ED regarding eye trauma by various objects and substances. Some of them are absurd–how did you get nail glue into your eye again?

I always considered these people who roam into the ED as inferior beings, until I experienced a similar episode days ago.

Somehow grapefruit juice managed to circumvent my glasses and splash into my eye. It was painful. I flushed my eye for about 30 seconds with sterile saline, and felt better afterward. Ideally, I should have flushed even longer, but I had 2 consults to see in the ER.

The next time I triage someone who sprays antiperspirant into their eyes, I’ll think twice before ridiculing them…

medicine ophthalmology

Residency has gotten a little bit more hectic. More exciting entries planned! Stay tuned! I’ll have some new entries out in about a 1 week!

Uncategorized

Every so often I overhear unruly commentary from various hospital staff about the doctors. The ones from environmental services are particularly colorful, even more so now that I’m in NYC.

“F-cking docs,” I heard one custodian mutter as he was cleaning up some coffee cups strewn about in the emergency room.

Other times I hear commentary among the cleaning crews about how good we [residents/doctors] “have it”, with our fancy clothes and expensive tastes.

There is a food stand in the lobby of our hospital. As residents, we receive $10 worth of food while on call. I believe that the cashier has gotten wind that we don’t pay for anything up to $10 from the way we stock up on beverages.

There is a cashier working on weekends who appears to be passively aggressive towards our “luxuries”. For the last three weekends I’ve been on call, I’ve always gotten 4 sodas ($1.50 ea) and 4 bags of chips ($1.00 ea). This should naturally ring up as $10, but the register magically rings up as $10.05 every time she is working the register. On weeknights that I’ve gotten the exact same items, I have never been asked to supplement my purchase with an additional 5 cents.

I haven’t attempted to rationalize with her on the absurdity of the purchases. There’s not even a $0.05 tag to any of the items I purchase.

misc

One of the most painful aspects of clinic, at least where I work, is that nine out of ten patients I see daily do not speak English. While I feel that I’m reaching my limit at broadening my linguistic abilities, it is disheartening not to be able to communicate fully with your patients. I occasionally use the interpreter lines only when necessary, because it adds an insurmountable delay to the schedule that cannot possibly be regained. At times, even the interpreters have difficulty understanding a patient’s native tongue.

Today a patient came into emergency triage stating that she had lost vision suddenly in one eye a month ago, but only decided to come to the clinic today. She also denied ever being here in the clinic. To no surprise, we did not have any records of their encounters in the clinic either.

I spent the next hour toiling around to find an egregious cause for her vision loss, only to find non-specific drusen in her fundus. When my attending, who was fluent in Spanish, questioned the patient again, the story was relayed in a different manner than I gathered. She had GRADUAL vision loss over a month, and she also “lost” her glasses 20 days ago. Her chart also magically appeared underneath my progress note–I suppose one of the techs found it 4 hours later–and a workup of AMD  was suggested in her plan.

Lesson learned: you can’t win.

medicine life

Interesting logo on our box of pig eyes for practicing sutures…

medicine medicine