Peer pressure

Today Laura and I finally gave in to the peer pressure we've been fighting off for over two years, and we put a deposit down for a dog. Yes, I know, we have now joined the ranks of young married couples who have dogs instead of babies. Anyway, we are getting an Akita, which means two things: 1) our dog will be way bigger than your dog, and 2) our dog will be bigger than Laura. We are getting a girl, and she was born on July 30th. We'll road trip down into Texas to get her sometime around October 1st. So until then we're going to be busy trying to figure out a name, buying all the eight billion things that a puppy needs, starting to read puppy training books, and periodically posting pictures of her. Here's the first, which was taken yesterday:
In other news, we finally put up pictures of our house on Facebook. Also, Laura and I are flying to Portland in two weeks, and miraculously, in the 39 hours we will be there, an REI used gear sale will be happening.

I finally found it.

Yesterday I found the worst smell man has ever experienced. A rather large guy came in with a ridiculous mass protruding from his abdomen. Imagine if somebody put a basketball on top of your belly, and that's what this looked like. Anyway, it turns out that this was not a basketball, but a giant hernia. Now, the thing with normal hernias that is that sometimes a small portion of small intestine can poke out into them. This is worrisome because the intestines can get their circulation cut off that way, and then they die. Well, this guy had pretty much his ENTIRE small intestine poke out, and guess what- its circulation got cut off. So when they open this guy up in the operating room, they find this guy's intestines rotting. Yeah, you read that right. So imagine the smell of someone's entire small bowel rotting. Now, add to that the smell of all the feces in this small intestine. And we're not talking the semi-solid crap that we all know and love, this straight up diarrhea-style crap, and it's everywhere. To give you an idea about the magnitude of this smell, keep in mind that we are in a place where people routinely do surgery on limbs that have gangrene, and drain cysts full of puss, and no one really even flinches. I was in the room next to where they opened this guy up, and the nurses started putting vapor rub on our masks to try and block out the smell in our room just so we could finish our surgery. Then they went to the next room. By the end of this, the smell had cleared out an entire wing of operating rooms, and nurses were working in 15-20 minute shifts just to keep from puking. It was one of the most mind-blowingly horrific experiences of my entire life.

And then I went and got lunch.

I am J.D.

One thing I have failed to mention about being at OU Tulsa is that I get free food in the hospital cafeteria. Now, I know that doesn't sound that awesome, but this also counts for the physician's lunch room which isn't too bad. It's also great because Keith Fischborn is having to pay for all the food he gets at the hospital.
So as you can imagine, it only took a matter of minutes for us students to figure out how to abuse this privilege. There are two major flaws in the free food system: 1) No one keeps track of how much you spend, and 2) They provide plastic grocery sacks at checkout counter. Yes, plastic grocery sacks- that we of course fill with all manner of packaged foods and beverages. So now our fridge is full of various Coke products and energy drinks, our pantry is full of every kind of chips, and Laura and I don't have to buy milk or orange juice any more. While it's not quite a trunk full of pudding cups, I thought it was funny how my life was just that much more like Scrubs.

My day in Hell

So my morning starts off (at 4:45) with me interviewing a patient, and this was the conversation:
"Hi, my name is Josh Reese. I'm a medical student here to check up on you."
"Hi, I'm the Anti-Christ."
Apparently this is how he always introduces himself, and after dispensing with these formalities we had a normal interview.
Next, I head to the ICU, because that's where my rotation is this week. While there, I get to see an 18 year old kid who had jumped off a cliff into a lake. The kid wasn't stupid, and he made sure there were no rocks or stumps, and that the water was deep enough. For some reason, though, when he jumped in, he hit the water funny, and shattered his spine, bled into his brain, and stayed underwater for 7 minutes. So, they resuscitate the kid just so we can watch him die in the ICU.
Right before it's time for me to come home, I get a page on the infamous Trauma Pager. It described the incoming case as a 17 year old girl in a car wreck who was unresponsive. At the end of the page, in the "extra info" section, there was this pearl of poetic verbiage- "Head is mushy." No kidding, that's what it said. And you know what? They weren't lying either.
Meanwhile, as an update to my previous blog, the older gang-banger who got shot in the face is doing quite well except for a mandible the radiologist described as "pulverized."
And now, more than 14 hours later, I'm just getting home in time to eat dinner and go to bed, so I can start this all over again tomorrow.