my neurology shadowing

So now I've got a story to tell, something unfit to go in the school post.

I drove to Lexington Thursday night to go to UK with JEb to work on Friday. She's been doing Neurology Pharm service for a few weeks and she was able to set me up because the attending was younger and probably more approachable. She almost recommended me not coming because the patient load was very low; her attending that she did rounds with only had 3 patients(though 3 or 4 consults in addition to that). But of course for me, something is better than nothing, plus JEb seems to like talking about what she does at work so I knew she liked the company.

So, Neurology works mostly with stroke patients and seizure patients. Two of the three the attending was covering were stroke patients and the other was still unknown. After the chart briefing (or whatever you would call it), the rounds started. I made it to the second patient, which was the one with an unknown condition. I won't talk about it a lot but it was a younger woman who was having tremors and 'opsculopsy?' or something that made her eyes jerk around too. This is where my rounding ended.

I'm pretty sure I know what the stimulus was, the nurse came in and took tape off her arm where an IV had been and the patient, unaware of the nurse's quick action, annoyingly grunted. I may have a vivid imagination, because if I'm not careful, I find myself unintentionally imagining someone's expressed pain. I was fine, and we left the room ready to move on to the next patient, then when I was out in the hallway I felt it coming. My vision started blurring, I was thinking oh Crap... and tried to breathe deeper. When I was failing to come up with a way to cease the problem and my ears had started ringing, I went ahead and said something to JEb to the side that I needed to sit down. She took me into a little nurse station off the hallway and sat me down, and I told her my vision was going out. She was already startled because I had started sweating and going pale. She gave me a Sprite, a straw and started trying to put graham crackers in my mouth.

The black out probably took a couple minutes to happen. Apparently, I blacked out right after I took the first bite of cracker. What I remember is having a fast-paced, flashing lights type of dream. I think I was actually dreaming about something specific too but I can't remember what it was, though I tried to remember when I woke up. Over on JEb's side of the situation, she apparently yelled for help when I blacked out, and the first resident who came in the room along with JEb saw me flinch my arms out. So I woke up from my dream and confusedly saw white coats standing all around me. I realized everyone from the rounds was focused on me. How embarrassing. They were discussing what they thought happened to me, apparently because the resident and JEb seemed to think I had seized. JEb seemed to think it could've been a seizure just because J-Bergomatica had had seizures in the past. The attending suggested it was just syncope. The seizure-suggesting resident seemed to excitedly ask me, "Do you want us to check you out? We should get an EEG.(!)" JEb and him were asking plenty of questions, and I was thinking of answers but couldn't make my words come out just yet.

I was pretty ready to shake out of it, and made sure to mention for a second time that I just have problems with vasovagal... (Which actually now that I look up 'syncope' and 'vasovagal' I just feel more like a wimp cause crap, there just technical terms for fainting! dangit.) But I did recover, and once my vision was mostly back, a nurse came to take my blood pressure and everyone oohed and aahed over a bp of 82/42 or something like that. I realized around then my heart was pounding, which of course would go along with that... I got up and made sure to say that I came to shadow, not to become a patient, so I got up and tried to walk strongly. JEb kept insisting she was sorry she hadn't fed me better that morning, because I was probably 'hypoglycemic' or whatever. The Sprite did help a lot, though.

I followed the doctors to the next patient, and while we waited at a nurse station, JEb asked me one more time if I wanted to sit down in a wheel chair. I went ahead and sat down, really with just the intention of sitting for a moment. To my dismay, the resident still wanted to take an EEG, so they took me away from my shadowing for that day. The EEG was interesting, I got a nap out of it, and after it was over I discovered that they had totally killed my hair for the rest of the day with this bees wax like material that held the detectors on. I would've taken a picture but I thought I might as well relax and pretend like I was taking this seriously. I also was confirmed that I had not, or at least was not, seizing. I was pretty tired the rest of the day, and I just sat around with JEb in her office again while she confirmed Pharm orders. I'm hoping thats not the last I see of those doctors, it would really suck to be remembered that way, but I don't know if its likely I'll see them again.

So that story could have been made short and sweet, but sometimes details make things a little more interesting, I think. Gosh, how many characters was that? That could've probably passed for a damn memoir in high school.

Anyways, I'm shadowing at University hospital now with a really great Internist. I suppose I'll save all my stories about that for my next blog. It looks like I'll have 7 days worth, so perhaps I will have lots of short and sweet stories for that one. I'll tell you now that I'm looking away whenever I see a nurse messing with an IV. Screw letting that happen again.