Strange Day

Today was perhaps one of the strangest day I've ever had on this rotation. It all started nice and early at 5 AM. I got to the hospital and rounded until 6 without ever seeing a resident. "That's weird," I thought.

At 630 at board checkout finally the residents showed up, a whole new set just because it was Thursday. Apparently the regularly scheduled residents all have clinic on Thursday and so the clinic residents come and take their place. We ran around the whole day with crosscover residents and a cross cover attending, on what was actually a pretty slow day, but somehow managed to not actually round on the patients at all. But back to my morning...

Then I went upstairs to see a baby born earlier. They told me I needed to see it for my education. So I get up there and the nurse says, "Oh, you want to see his malformations. Look here." And she takes off the diaper. I've seen ambigious genitalia before, but this was not ambiguous..definitely a boy. After trying to figure out what his problem was called, I found one single case report at pub med here. If the link is too medical mumbo jumbo for you, what it says is that this particular problem is where the scrotum is actually ABOVE the shaft. I didn't know what to think, and then the nurse says to look at his bottom. At which point I noticed his anus was way too high. It was posterior, just not low enough. The attending said he would never sit down to poo. Poor kid.

And then I met the mail-order bride. She was pregnant and not really having a problem but her husband was a complete nervous wreck. With way too much coffee. He kept checking the empty mug he brought in with himself in case magical coffee appeared in it again. And he never let her answer for herself. And asked a million and one irrelevant questions. "Why are you asking about that? Is something wrong? Is it bad that she is hurting like that? What should I do? Should she be taking her medicine more often? Is the baby a boy or girl? Is the cord wrapped around the neck? Is the baby too low? Where's her uterus?" 1) I can only answer 1 question at a time 2) I don't know the sex of a baby by asking about contraction pain 3) I don't have xray vision 4) I really wanted to find this guy some xanax just to shut him up so we could talk to his wife who actually knew what symptoms she was having.

At least it was interesting today.