Tag Team

Well I know I've been in school for almost three weeks now and haven't mentioned a single thing about what my third year of medical school has been like. For those of you out of the loop, I started with Pediatrics. So far it has been awesome. I'm on outpatient so we've had SWEET 9-5 hours the entire time. It has been glorious. On top of that...the doctors are great. Just about all of them have a great sense of humor and love helping you out. The best part about it is they are fully aware that this is our first rotation so they cut us a lot of slack...sometimes a little too much (it makes me worry for when I hit my surgery rotation in a couple of months).

Anyways. I'm sure you're just dying for a fun anecdote from 3OPC (that's the outpatient clinic in case you thought I had joined a gang). Well sometimes when it's slow Beez and I team up and see a patient together to kill some time...a "Tag Team" if you will. Well today we had a pretty decent case. After we suited up...we came up with this....



Yes on clinic days we wear the same underwear. And since it was Thursday, we wore his colors. The kids really like it when we dress up. The doctors were reluctant when we came in all oiled up, but I think it's grown on them. But, back to the task at hand. This is how the kid presented:

Our 14 year old came in after he had been diagnosed with pink eye 5 days ago. He has been taking his antibiotics as scheduled and his eye is now worse. The discharge from his eye is clear and his sclera is "super-red" (more red than normal). Now he complains that it feels like something is in it, pain with movement, and photophobia. Well Beez and put together a great workup and we were pretty confident that it was a viral conjunctivitis and were ready to send him on his way.

Well the after we were pimped in the conference room, we had a little work to do. We went back in to see the patient and the doctor was convinced that this wasn't a virus. Now we concerned that this kid had Glaucoma, Corneal Abrasion, or Herpetic Keratitis (Yes I know this is a virus, but a little more serious than the one's we were thinking of). In a matter of five minutes we were on the phone with Opthamology trying to get this poor kid seen IMMEDIATELY!! Apparently he could be blind before the morning. So much for sending him home with a pat on the back and a note telling him to put a cold compress on it. Samsonite! We were way off!

Maybe our matching underwear was on too tight. Or maybe we still have a lot to learn (I like to think that it's the latter becuase I really like Killer Bee Thursday). But apparently the "practice" of medicine takes a lot of practice (that was clever!). I wish someone would have told me that this isn't as easy as watching an episode of Scrubs. I guess this Tag Team still has some kinks to work out before our Pay-Per-View special.