wind up toy

i feel like a wind up toy. every week i get a new preceptor. it's like starting from scratch every. single. week. and mondays are generally really really boring since i have to shadow my new preceptor and try to prove to them i've seen (most) of it all before. that i'm competent. that i know how to talk to and examine a patient. add to that mix that the MA's here do all the chart notes themselves and are pretty territorial about it, and my work load dwindles quite a bit.
i'm a little unsure about what to do about it...do i just take the nice relaxing, no stress rotation and go with it or do i try to put up a stink at this point in the game and figure out a better strategy? add to that the clientele who mostly don't want a student (that's why they're paying out of pocket, dammit!) and 2 new providers who are scrambling to add as many new patients as possible to their rosters...fighting over patients now that business is a little slower in town...and it makes their time for me pretty low on the priority list. it's a bit of a problem. by the end of the week, everyone is happy, things are getting cranked out, i've finally found a groove...and then monday it all comes back to a screeching halt again.

on the other end of the ranting...another good weekend was had exploring out and about. more mountains, lakes, cowboy towns, rivers, and waterfalls. it never ends here. on a funny note, ran into a classmate's bf coming down off of mt. washington, the peak in the picture. random. it was totally one of those "hey! what are YOU doing here?" moments.

favorite moments in clinic from last week include chatting it up with the 1960 olympic gold medal winner of the breastroke (not a whole lot of effort involved, he has found a second calling as a motivational speaker) who is trying to gain support to get rid of the medals and move to more of a super bowl ring award...because what DO you do with a medal for the rest of your life besides put it in a safety deposit box somewhere? interesting dilemma. that i will never have. that most people will never have. but i did like that he referenced bend in a way that made me want to move here even more....he said that there are tons of other former professional athletes and olympians that call bend home, that i would be in good company if i lived here. i love it, as if by a mere change of address, i too could be a virtual athletic rockstar. which is so appealing to my former self. tis true, lots more badassness here than obesity. ir's appealing, no doubt.

also, had a handful of ranchers come in. i love them as much as i love the vets. they have such a simplistic richness to their lives. talked to one couple for a long time about cures for "post suckers", ie horses that like to eat the fenceposts. a good soaking of creosote usually does the trick. alternately, a good dousing in goose shit will probably work too. whatever is more readily available. i bet that would work for nail biters too. and probably a great host of other maladies. i love when they tell stories about life on the ranch, like you know just what they're talking about. "i ain't ever seen such a thing before as a bull suckling a cow, have you? i mean, he's almost 2 years old. that ain't right, don't you think?" ummmm....probably not?

also had a fair share of vets...those WW II vets looove their stories. a good one popped up today from one of the local band of brothers (he had the weekly luncheon that he had to go to, otherwise he would have stayed to tell me more, i'm sure). This patient was in a trench at the battle of the bulge (which i had to google to get my facts straight, but to tone it down to the point of idiocy, it was the bloodiest battle of WWII) and happened to be next to another soldier who is also now involved in the local band of brothers luncheon extravaganza- when a german grenade came flying in. they tried to throw it out, but there was a cover on top of the trench that they couldn't get through so the soldier threw a blanket on it and dove over it. to save the lives of everyone else in that trench by using his body as a shield. it exploded, everyone retreated, and they left the soldier for dead. but he wasn't dead, as someone found out after going back later for important paperwork they'd left behind. there's a happy ending here...the wounded soldier recovers from his wounds, receives medals up the wazoo, and comes home to find one of his trenchmates here in bend, OR. and so now the big joke between these two goes something like this...

"remember that time in the trenches when we were next to eachother and that german grenade went off?"
" remember it!?! shit, not only were you next to me, parts of you went flying over me, around me, and on me!" (big laughter here)

oh, army humor.

heard a great one liner from the wife of a patient today complaining about his seborrheic keratoses, which we frequently refer to as "barnacles"

"so what you're saying doc, is that if he were a ship, we'd need to scrape his hull?".

precisely that. and i'm using it from here on out. specially with the vets.