I'm a little bit County, and you're a little bit rock 'n roll

I just started a rotation at the higher ranked, more academically minded institution across town, and I feel like a fish out of water.
---

PSYCH RESIDENT

Oh my god! I took care of the craziest patient today!! Listen to this, you won't believe it, but I swear it was true. She was covered in her own feces and was talking to her hallucinations as she threw pieces of paper at us! 

OTHER PSYCH RESIDENT

Holy cow! What did you do??

FIRST PSYCH RESIDENT

Well, we didn't know what to do, so we gave her a combo of Zyprexa and Ativan IM. Anything to calm her down quickly, you know.

ME

Wait! You gave those together??

BOTH RESIDENTS

[stare at me as though they suddenly realize that there is another person in the room as I blush to the high heavens for speaking when not spoken to]

...

FIRST PSYCH RESIDENT

Well, I think all that talk about respiratory depression is just anecdotal. Anyhow... [pointedly stares at his co-resident and obviously dismisses me]... I don't even know how she ended up at our hospital! How did she get through security?? Hahahaha!!

ME

[speechless]

---
It's gonna be a long month. Oy.

You probably shouldn't say this to a girl

ME

Man, look at these old pictures of me. I was so skinny! Look! I wasn't even trying to suck in my stomach!

MARTIN

It's okay, now you're plump with life!

ME

...

MARTIN

...

ME

...

MARTIN

...I meant to say full of life.

ME

...

MARTIN

...

ME

[glares]

MARTIN
I mean,  I love you?

Flowers for Algernon

I was studying at Starbucks next to a few other girls, all of us with our headphones dutifully plugged in, to give off that extremely studious, please don't try soliciting anything from me, vibe. Then, I heard loud gasps all around me, and so I looked up to see a boy, tastefully but casually dressed in a dress shirt tucked into some trouser pants, holding out a bouquet of flowers for the girl sitting next to me.

[Here's where I confess that I don't actually listen to any music when I'm studying, but I wear my headphones so that when the homeless person comes in to ask for money, I can just shrug them off without having to actually listen to their sob story. Yes, I realize this makes me heartless, but hey, I have rent to pay and books to read.]

He held out the bouquet of flowers, and he launched into a spiel about how he's loved her ever since she first walked into their English literature class, ten minutes late, and through the wrong door. The other girls were listening and I could see Taylor-Swiftian hearts melting around me. But then I surreptitiously stole a look at the girl the speech was intended for, and all I could see was abject horror. Realizing that others were now watching and listening, she sputtered, "Those flowers aren't meant for me!" He paused in the middle of his grandiosity, shocked silent mid-speech, "..uh, but they are for you." "No no!" she shot back, "all this that you're doing? This is meant for someone else...you -- you will find someone else who this is meant for."

The flowers were now awkwardly between them, as he held them out, and she continued to obstinately refuse to take them. He tried to save face, saying that despite what her response was to his declaration, he had bought the flowers for her. But she just looked down, not willing to make any further eye contact.

By this time, everyone was busy trying not to make eye contact as well, as we all realized how amazingly awkward this all was. Everyone stared at their phones, their books, their coffee sleeves - at anything! - to avoid making eye contact, as the boy looked around at the scene of his complete and utter humiliation.

He turned around, put the flowers down on an unoccupied table next to the door, and then walked out the door.

The busy hum in the Starbucks resumed, and the flowers remained untouched, like a memorial to spurned teenage love.

That poor boy. I still have no clue how that girl was able to continue studying after all that awkwardness. (And this coming from the self-proclaimed queen of awkward!)

Love you more

I'm horrifyingly nostalgic tonight.

Maybe it was because Lisa sent out an email asking for everyone's addresses, and although I always knew it, somehow seeing all the different zip codes made me really grasp how far flung across the continent we are. Maybe it was seeing everyone's titles and positions in their email signatures. Maybe it was realizing that we were using proper email instead of AIM group messages full of improper capitalization and emoticons. Maybe it's because I just found and listened to my very first Lifehouse album that soundtracked our freshman year so perfectly.

My friends, we've grown up.

I miss that I'm not as close to anyone in residency as I was with them. I miss how I can't just wander into my neighbor's kitchen and plop down in my oversized dorm t-shirt, complete with a double entendre slogan, and just wallow in self-pity or group-pity or whatever it was that we did at 3am in the morning on far too many occasions. I miss the ten different viewpoints to our arguments, I miss laughing over our awkward encounters, I miss our group breakfasts and dollar-store mugs full of coffee, I miss everything.

I miss us. Because I can't help but feel like I'm never going to be able to recreate our crazy group chemistry.

I miss what we used to have.

I guess they were right. College really was the best years of my life.

In which I try to make the judge read between the lines

Today, I had a probable cause hearing in which I had to testify in front of my extremely sweet, but extremely psychotic and paranoid sixteen-year-old patient. The thing is, I'd been doing therapy with him for two weeks, and even though he was absolutely convinced that everyone else was out to get him, he had started to trust me and tell me things...like how everyone else was out to get him. So now I had to give my testimony  and use the right words so as to not set off my patient and keep our therapeutic relationship intact.

Sounds easy enough, but I found myself trying to wink my way through it, hoping that the judge would understand the hidden meanings behind my words.

JUDGE

All right Dr. Wu. So can you tell me why this child should stay in the hospital?

ME

Um, yes sir. Our patient has had a very troubled past and had terrible things happen to him, including things that no child should go through...[and here I fought the urge to actually physically wink at the judge]. He has very firm beliefs that others are conspiring against him and the other patients and feels it is necessary to protect them at all costs. 

JUDGE

Hm. I see. Well Sam, would you like to say anything?

SAM

Yes sir. I need to get out of here, because they're trying to kill me. I'm not the one who needs to be here sir. There's a man in the walls who's a shape-shifter and he's going to kill us all unless I get out of here. I'm begging you, Your Honor, you gotta let me go so that I can avenge all of our deaths!!!

So much for trying to side step around the issue.

Please don't let me be the only doctor on this plane

The most stressful two minutes in my life aren't the two minutes I have to wait for the nurses to draw up an emergency intramuscular injection for my psychotic patient who is raging high on drugs and willing to take out the nearest person standing between him and his chosen manifest destiny. No, in those two minutes, I'm surrounded by trained nurses and sheriffs with tasers and hard restraints.

So those minutes are bliss compared to this.

I think every psychiatrist dreads it. And yet, it seems to happen to me more than any other physician I know. On my most recent plane trip home from Europe, I was in the midst of breathing deeply to avoid thinking about turbulence and birds flying into engines and having to land emergently on the Hudson River, when  a girl started frantically screaming that her mother had stopped breathing. Oh crap. Flight attendants rushed down the aisle, and then inevitably, the flight attendant leader's voice came on overhead to calmly ask, "If there are any medical personal aboard, please make yourself known to our crew by pressing your call light."

I didn't press my call light. Instead, I held my bated breath for someone else to press their call light. Surely, there was an emergency medicine doctor or an internist or a trauma surgeon on board. Surely, there was someone with more CPR experience than me.

Instead, all I got was silence.

Shit.

And then, a woman stood up and made her way towards the commotion. "I'm a retired nurse," she told the crew.

I exhaled.

But I kept one ear open, because I was fully aware that I was shirking my physician duties, and oh man, was this going against every oath that I had taken upon graduating from medical school?

What I heard was not pleasant:

NURSE

Oh shoot.

FLIGHT ATTENDANT

What?

NURSE

I can't feel her pulse.

HYSTERICAL DAUGHTER

MY MOM HAS NO PULSE???!?!?!?

NURSE

No...well...I just can't feel it. Maybe?

HYSTERICAL DAUGHTER

IS MY MOM DEAD?!?!?!!?!?

FLIGHT ATTENDANT

No, she's fine. Miss, you need to stop yelling. You're being hysterical. And that's not going to bring your mom back.

HYSTERICAL DAUGHTER

[bursts into further wailing]

Fabulous. I craned my head to look at the mom five rows back. I could see her chest rise and fall, so clearly she was breathing; she was pink, and she most definitely wasn't dead. A flight attendant was walking by me, so I tugged on his arm. "Hey, I'm a psychiatrist, do you need my help?" He brushed me off, "No, we have a retired nurse."

I had just been absolved of any duties.

And then I realized that the flight attendant probably didn't realize that I was a doctor. Didn't realize that a psychiatrist is a real full-fledged MD. And the nurse was making the daughter even more freaked out. So I unbuckled myself, despite the seat belt warning sign, and made my way towards the patient. Everything was in chaos. The patient had a mask on her face, but the oxygen wasn't connected. The nurse had her hand pressed up against the patient's carotid, pressed so tightly that her own fingers had lost blood flow. And the daughter kept shaking her mother, loudly instructing her to "wake up!"

I went into doctor mode and tried to not think about my own insecurities and turbulence anxieties as the plane dropped and weaved in the air. "Hello ma'am, I'm Dr. Wu, and I'm going to take care of you okay?" She nodded at me and squeezed my hand as I held hers and checked for her pulse. "Do you take any meds?" Her daughter hysterically started crying again, loudly saying, "No, my mom is completely healthy! She doesn't take anything!!" But the mom squeezed my hand again and looked at me. I pulled her mask away so that she could answer me. "Cymbalta and Wellbutrin," she whispered faintly to me.

Slam dunk. This was one of mine.

Feeling slightly more reassured that I could handle her emergency, which was seeming more and more like a panic attack, I smiled at her. "Is that for depression or anxiety?"

"Anxiety."

Yes. Definitely one of mine.

I sent a flight attendant to get me some ginger ale, and sat down on the aisle and worked through some breathing exercises and guided imagery. When the flight attendant returned, I prayed to the placebo gods, and gave it to the mom, telling her "Ginger ale is perfect for nausea, and you know what? You're probably a little dehydrated, so this will help with that too." The placebo effect worked, as she took a sip and immediately smiled, saying, "Oh I do feel much better now."

She took off her oxygen mask and I made my way back to my seat.

Just as I was starting to drift back off into my jet-lagged sleep, the flight attendant came by with paperwork for me to fill out. So, instead of resting, I filled out all the random documents that needed to be signed. And realizing that my name was now connected to this patient, I felt compelled to turn around to look at her every fifteen minutes, to make sure that she was still alive and breathing.

So much for the Good Samaritan rule.

The icing on the cake? My seat neighbor, upon seeing that I wasn't going to sleep anymore, immediately launched into all of her own sleep and bowel movement problems, and didn't stop talking for the remaining five hours of our flight.

Dr. Meanie Bikini knows.

Just watched the pilot episode of the CW's "Emily Owens, MD" and dude..the mean attending on that show might be Dr. Meanie Bikini's doppelganger.

....and the character's name is awfully close to Dr. Meanie Bikini's real name.

Holy crap!

I've been compromised!! My cover is blown!

Shut everything down! Initiate evacuation plan #4!! Save yourself!!

Pew pew pew!