Adolescent Medicine

We had PBL and a seminar on bipolar disorders this morning. The seminar wound up being pretty good, even though the speaker basically didn't cover anticonvulsant drugs at all like he was supposed to do.

In the afternoon, I had peds clinic. I was working with an adolescent medicine specialist. I went in there thinking, "Oh, great, yet another exciting afternoon of well child visits." I figured maybe if I was lucky there would be a few sore throats or earaches. But this clinic was awesome, probably the best clinic day I've ever had. My patients were all teens, and most of them had eating disorders. One was also hearing voices. They were a lot like the kid we've been reading about in this week's PBL case. I know everyone has their share of teenage angst, but not like this. These patients really need help. It was incredibly interesting and also very sad to hear their stories and how much they suffer with body image issues and other problems. I definitely identified with several of them. One patient in particular wanted to go to medical school and even knew all about CCLCM.

I was utterly exhausted by the end of the afternoon. I think today was a lot more emotional for me since I was seeing teens. It was really intense and fast-paced and just an all-around great experience. I am doing my next peds clinic with this same doctor. I'm really not all that interested in going into peds. But if I did do peds, I'd definitely do adolescent medicine!