Monday, February 22, 2010

Pregnancy wheel app

So I finally got around to downloading the pregnancy wheel application on my blackberry although my OB rotation is ending this week. I know...kinda late! I was using the good old school method although practically every intern and resident has an iphone with the wheel application. What prompted me to finally download the app was a very LONG 24 hour call of constantly trying to locate the wheel in my overly stuffed white coat. It once took me five minutes fumbling through all four pockets. Grrrr!

Anyways, so I'm reading the reviews on the blackberry app site and just had to chuckle a little bit with all the expectant mothers rating the app with 1 or 2 stars because the wheel only provided the estimated date of delivery and current gestational date based on the last menstrual period. One reviewer was disappointed because the wheel did not approximate the size of the baby/fetus. I think the only good rating came from a nurse who said the dates were really accurate for the wards. All I kept thinking while reading these reviews was how far we have come with technology that a phone application can cause unwarranted anxiety to patients. I'm actually surprised I haven't yet come across a patient on this rotation who hasn't busted out with their iphone/blackberry with their own app and telling us their approximate due dates! The joys of technology...at least now I don't have to fumble through my pockets for the wheel and looking like a hot mess third year med student. As it is, that already happens enough times!

Monday, February 15, 2010

Long weekend update

Gosh! It's been forever and a day since I last wrote. A million things have happened but I really can't update all of my activities since my last post so I will update on the past weekend/month. Right now I'm on my OB rotation. One word: AWESOME! I knew I would really like it and was about 90% sure that OB is what I want to go into before I started my rotation, but now I'm convinced this is what I really want to do. We have eight weeks of OB, so the first month (January) I spent doing inpatient. Looking back, I guess I worked really long hours but I didn't notice much (besides how much weight I lost!) because I loved being there everyday and didn't mind waking up at 3 or 4 in the morning to go to work. The weight loss probably came from not eating because I slept whenever I wasn't at the hospital, and that included most meals. What else...oh yeah! I delivered babies while I was on inpatient! The hospital I worked at was a serious baby catching factory so the opportunities to deliver are pretty much endless. By far, delivering a baby has been the coolest thing EVER! I totally forgot what the sex of the first baby (pretty sure it was a girl) was due to my initial shock and fear of dropping the poor thing that I forgot to look! I'm a mess.

On inpatient, I also got my first taste of "conversing" in Spanish because most of patients at this hospital (at least OB) are Spanish speakers only. I put it in quotation marks because it's really me butchering the language. I'm kicking myself for taking German in high school and then French in college instead of Spanish. I mean, really, when am I ever going to use either of the other two? So my plan is to buy the Rosetta stone language program for Spanish and ease my way into learning it.

So now I'm on outpatient mostly working at this large group practice. The pace is much slower, which is nice so I get more time to study for my shelf (end of rotation exam) in a couple weeks. Today is a holiday so we're all enjoying the long weekend that is coming off a long week off. DC just has the biggest snow storm in over a hundred years I guess. The President dubbed it "snowmaggedon" so now all my facebook and twitter friends have pictures of snow EVERYWHERE! I was in Dupont Circle last night for dinner and most of the cars were still buried in feet of snow. The cute little dump trucks that have been a permanent fixture all over the city for the past week and a half were still working late last night trying to get as much snow shipped out of the district before tonight and tomorrow's snowfall. Yes, we are getting more! I've come to realize that I'm not a fan of snow. Although DC doesn't really snow all that much (at least for the last two winters before this one), this snowpocalypse has given me enough reason to decide on going to the west coast for residency. I'm a fan of ocean, sand, heat, tanning lotion, and turtles. Concrete, snow, ice, and thick coats are the completely opposite.