Lung Cancer and Laryngitis

This has been a rough week, and I have really been dragging. It felt like Friday would never come. I still don't completely have my voice back even now, but the cough is a lot better. I can talk a little bit as long as I talk softly.

Wednesday was a really long day. I had PBL and a lung cancer path seminar in the morning, then a pulmonary hypertension clinic in the afternoon. That clinic wasn't as good as most of the other special clinics we have done. But I'm not sure how much of it was just that I wasn't feeling the greatest. I think maybe the engineer types liked it, because there was a lot of talk about the pumps used to treat people with chronic pulmonary hypertension. I have to admit that even when I'm feeling well, that kind of stuff really doesn't interest me. :-P In the evening, there was a Dean's Dinner at the Foundation House for my class. Only about half a dozen of my classmates showed up, which is pretty embarrassing. Plus, now the administration is probably going to cancel our spring Dean's Dinner due to lack of student interest, which kind of makes me mad. I really like going to the Dean's Dinners. Anyway, the talk and the dinner were both awesome, and I'm glad that I went.

This afternoon after POD, I had my first acute care clinic. I got lost in the hospital and ended up meeting my preceptor half an hour late. But he was cool about it, and the patient I had was really awesome. I did a complete history and physical on her and went through the steps of getting her admitted to the hospital. She was a woman who came from a rural area and did a lot of chores. When I asked her what the chief complaint was, she said that she was getting short of breath. Then I asked her what she had been doing at the time that she noticed the shortness of breath, and she said that she was chopping wood with an ax. I was thinking that I probably would get out of breath from chopping wood with an ax too, and I'm a lot younger than she is!

Later tonight, I am going to one of the first year's house for dinner. But I am going to take a nap for an hour first, because right now I am just drained.