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.

Call night

Summing up my night thus far in one phrase (this is what show sup on my pager):

Gunshot wound to the face- ETA 7 min.

A day in my life

My day begins with waking up at 4 am. After taking a shower and downing a cup of coffee (Starbucks Pikes Place roast), I'm off to the hospital. I'll spare you the boring details of asking patients about bowel movements and farting, and jump to the more interesting. So far today I've spent 9 hours in surgery. In one surgery, the attending nicked the femoral artery, and everyone got showered in blood. I'm talking horror movie style blood spurts. Later on tonight I was taking out a thing that is basically an iv line in the femoral artery in the same patient, just the other femoral artery. What's supposed to happen is we pull this out, and I hold pressure for 10 minutes and we're done. What actually happened is that we lost the hole in this obese lady's fat rolls, pushed in the wrong place, and 30 seconds later this lady is laying in a pool of her own blood. Seriously, a pool of her own blood. after a couple of more minutes, we finally realize that something is wrong, and get pressure on the right spot. Don't worry, she's fine now. Also, I've given a rectal exam, placed a catheter, and started an IV tonight.
There's also non-blood and guts stuff. Today the kindly old lady whom I've seen every day since I started was discharged, and I never knew, and so never got to say bye. It's a weird feeling. Also, I met a lady with ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease) who lost the ability to talk 2 years ago. She now communicates with her family via text messaging. We had a text message contest, and this tiny little lady destroyed me. It was glorious.
Welp, it's now 2 in the morning, and I just heard a Life Flight helicopter fly in. It's too bad, because I could use a nap. I've already been interrupted three times since i started this. Anyway, I start rounds again at 4:45, and the day starts over from there.
And that's my life right now.

Surgery

I start my third year of medical school with a surgery rotation. Right now it's 4:05 am, and I'm eating a quick breakfast before I head up to the hospital. I don't expect to get home today until sometime after five. Tomorrow is even better. I'll be leaving at the same time, but instead of getting to come home, I'll be staying up at the hospital all night as I am "on-call," and then I'll put in another full day, hoping to get home around five on Friday.
So, this will be my life for the next seven weeks. Don't you wish you'd gone to medical school?

No rest for the weary

First, we moved, and it's awesome.
Second, we went to Chicago and then Oregon with Joe and Meg, and that was also awesome. We went hiking around waterfalls, went wine tasting through the Willamette Valley (and got a free bottle of pinot noir!), went to the beach, went for a night on downtown, ate seafood till we almost puked, etc. Here's my great story from the trip though: we were flying out Saturday afternoon, and the REI used gear sale (which is where I got my Chacos for $2.83) was Sunday morning. We sullenly got on our plane, and then Jesus Christ himself came down and broke our plane. Seriously, they got on the intercom and said, "Sorry, but the plane is broken." I guess they didn't mention Jesus because it's not PC. Anyway, I got to go to the used gear sale after all, and my life was complete.
Then I came home, and spent the next two weeks studying for the United States Medical Licensing Exam, Step 1 (I have to take two more of these before I get my license. Step 3 is two days long.). If you know me, you'll understand that having to spend two weeks studying was the worst experience of my entire life. My only consolation is that most people spend 5-7 weeks studying. Of course they'll do better than me, but I got to go the REI used gear sale and they didn't. Anyway, I finally got the test over with, and that's amazing.
Fourth and finally, I know have this one week to do all the projects on our new house. My projects include: putting in new fans, putting in a garden on the side of the house, putting in a garden with a pond and waterfall in the back yard, replacing some of the siding on our garage, rewiring the lights in our garage, painting, and planting a crap load of bushes.
Anyway, my two favorite things about our house right now are 1) last night Laura and I drank some port in our library and 2) right over where our waterfall garden will be, there is a mimosa tree which is blooming right now. Our entire yard smells like a flower garden. It's unreal.