“If you could only see what I have seen with your eyes”

So goes the quote from Bladerunner. But it's not about sci-fi cinema today, but about ER. Just finished up the first of 4 stints shadowing an ER physician which are part of an Intro to Emergency Medicine class. It's a nice chance to see the real world before we become a part of it, more than a year from now as rotations kick in.

While most of my classmates opted for the local trauma center, I said either that or the swanky suburban hospital was fine with me. I'm just here to check things out, see if the emergency thing may be in my future. Someone must have figured out that I'm a man of the suburbs, and I got the posh hospital. Still, an emergency department is an emergency department, and I've seen what I came to see. It started of with rather banal things: headaches, dizziness, a case of bleeding hemorrhoids, but towards the end, things kicked into high gear with congestive heart failure, malfunctioning heart pump, and non-Hodgkins lymphoma. Best of all, I saw the procedures that I wanted to see. IV lines being put in, catheterization, and a blood draw from the femoral vein (right near the groin, ouch!).

My ER preceptor is a nice, laid back guy. Very human with the patients, yet able to project the doctorliness in a professional manner. Residents were also cool, one of whom decided to give me some education while the doc was too busy. Now I have a few things to look up as "homework." Good stuff.