I love you with all my kidney :)

My two week rotation in the PICU wrapped up without too many glitches. It was a good week, with patients getting better and moving out to the regular floors and coming off ECMO treatment, which is always a great week. What I find fascinating is that a lot of our patients come in with simple complaints: stomachaches, fever, night sweats, but they end up being life-threatening and/or even lethal. For example, one of the patients in the PICU last week came in with vomiting and it turns out it's possible she has stomach cancer.

The ICU setting is by far my favorite area. It's challenging and very biochemical, yet the team atmosphere and approach lends itself to learning something new every day. I've already experienced the PCTU, the PICU, and my last 2 week rotation will be the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit). That rotation will be 2 weeks long as well.  I'm really looking forward to that one!

Ya know what's crazy? Including this week, I only have 6 weeks of my clinical rotation left. AHH! This week I'm working with pediatric renal patients - so kidneys all week! It's interesting how different specialty areas are. Last week in the PICU our patient list was 60-some patients long, and this week it's on average ~4-6 inpatients. But in addition to this is the outpatient clinics which can be anywhere from 2 patients to 12. I think this is an area that I'd really like, working with both patients in and out of the hospital. The inpatients bring about challenging biochemistry and medical nutritional therapy. Yet, when working in an outpatient setting, it brings the ability to really get to know your patients and see them grow up and (hopefully) stay healthy!

Other than that, I'm just working away on my oral and case studies. Think about a case study done in undergrad and now think of it done on an actual patient, someone that you make direct interventions and recommendations for, and times the difficulty of the paper and presentation x 183,295,752. But, that's exactly why they give us about 4 months to find two patients and begin the paper and presentation. The paper and presentation have to be on two completely different patients so there is a lot of opportunity for learning! My oral case study is going to be on argininosuccunic aciduria and my written case study is going to be on ECMO therapy as life support in calcium channel blocker overdose.


I can't believe how fast this year is really moving...I'm going to be applying for jobs here in a few weeks - YAY! 


109 days left!!