Talk the talk

Some amazing words, lingo, and phrases from the world of medicine.

tismus: I think it means you can't open your jaw because of muscle weakness. I can't wait to rhyme it with Christmas!

defervesce: a beautiful word with a meaning you can kinda deduce... to experience abatement of fever. I just like its sonic kinship with effervesce. I can picture your fever bubbling away. Also defervescence.

phlegmon: I can already hear Scott saying, "I am PHLEGMON!" in his bad-guy superhero voice. "Solid mass formed by inflamed connective tissue, such as forms around an appendix in appendicitis."

When my psychiatry preceptor was explaining the "kindling" effect of manic episodes in bipolar disorder, he said, "The more you have, the more you have."

Today we heard about "marsupialization." You figure it has something to do with, maybe, a pouch? Indeed! "Surgical alteration of a cyst or similar enclosed cavity by making an incision and suturing the flaps to the adjacent tissue, creating a pouch." It works when a single draining of a cyst wouldn't last or wouldn't get all the material out.

Evidence of my indoctrination into this sociolinguistic culture is that I have finally stopped abbreviating "with" as "w/" and have adopted the medical "c" with a line over it. Without = "s" with a line over it. Sort of espanoly in a couple of ways: correlates with "con" and "sin," and the line is kinda like an accent. I resisted the switch, but now I'm into it.

Weekends are the new vacation

Nothing makes a girl appreciate days off like never having days off. Hello, gentle readers. It was all hospital all the time there for a few weeks. Strangely, the longest week of my working life flew by the fastest. Saturday thru Friday with two call nights in there, but somehow being that busy accelerates time. I realized that my anxiety builds when I'm idle, when I'm waiting, when I'm thinking about work. But actually being there, in motion, well, it's not so bad! My dream team also made the week a joy. I seriously could not have hoped for nicer, cooler, smarter people to work with. I do miss my "family," that end of camp feeling. But I'll see them around. Now returning to regular pisces life seems so low-key.

All I can really think about right now, though, is David Foster Wallace. Infinite Jest means something in my life, as so did its creator. I was staring at his signature in my book today, and my heart hurt. Sure, he didn't seem like the most stable man ever, too much of a genius and creativity for complete mental health, but this? Who will write about tennis? Who will write 80-page articles in Rolling Stone? I will miss you, you crazy footnoting pomo freak.

q4

Julia was right: It is fun to be on a team. We pisces fish are so solitary that it feels good to have a little hospital family. I'm the "youngest," so everyone looks out for me and makes sure I'm not getting in to trouble. My slightly older sister, the sub-i, will arrive tomorrow. Our fraternal twin sibs, the interns, look up to our big brother, the R2, who is our bridge to "dad," our attending. Of course, my "dad" isn't much older than I am... The twins somehow remain sweet and smiley despite living at the hospital. They do remember what it was like to be me. D said he would never mind staying an extra half hour at the end of the day to help me out, teach me, answer questions... and this from a guy who is actively sad to be away from his young daughter. And C said my four favorite words to me early and often: "You should go home." Whenever someone said, "We are on call tomorrow," I was like, "WE!" That word that says we are together, a group, a mini tribe, a unit, with connections between us, roles, give and take, help and be helped, community!

When D the intern writes orders, he starts them with "please" and ends with "Thanks!" So cute. I gave him a little bit of a hard time about it, and he was like, "I know, and the nurse who carries it out doesn't even see what I write, but it still feels wrong to just write a command."

Similarly, I was so impressed how everyone kindly addresses the pretty-much-unconscious ICU patients. They are unresponsive, tubes and cords everywhere, and people still say, "Hi, Ms. Quiroga, I'm going to take a look at your leg rash now, OK?" Strong work, team.

Of all the patients we have right now, I instantly gravitate towards the ones who have psych issues. Spinal cord infarct? OK OK, but how is he adjusting to the fact that he is paralyzed from the waist down? I'm all about the guy's drug abuse and suicidal ideation. (I remember when "SI" meant Sports Illustrated to me.) Fast-growing neck mass? But he had a major depressive episode 6 months ago! Even though I didn't have the breakthrough moment about my specialty this year, I still have the small joys of confirmation.

Sleep time. On call tomorrow.

And a happy belated birthday to Ali!! Sad I couldn't celebrate with you yesterday, my dear.

And safe travels to Chunk, who heads to LA and then onto his great Latin American adventure tomorrow. A much-deserved, long-awaited reward for too much work of the grindstone variety. Buen viaje! I will miss you!