i have come full circle. my fever has broken, my throat is desquamating (an absolutely disgusting process), and uninfected, virgin pharyngeal flesh is repaving my oral cavity. sweet, precious health — i’m better! but i am back in lumberton.
l-ville, l-town, l-city. i forgot how boring this place is at night. two of my housemates are home, taking up the whole living room. i noticed them watching televised golf (what?) and then enemy of the state (blah). these boys are neither very interesting or very nice, so i am avoiding them. they are overly testosteron-ey men and they seem like former-fratheads-who-wish-they-still-were. as random room-mates go, i would rather be with a girl. if nothing else, we would probably be more likely to agree on a tv station.
not that i should be watching tv. i have exactly 2 days left to study for my shelf exam, and one of them is almost over. i paid for a shiny new copy of peds appleton & lange with my hard-earned cash, and damn it, for that reason alone i feel obligated to finish it. 4.5 chapters down, 6.5 to go. doable, but not without considerable pain.
so after a nine day hiatus, i went back to work today! some of the nurses gave me odd looks, as in “you came back??”, but for the most part nothing was different. my preceptor (not the 8-foot tall guy, but one of his colleagues) made me get a repeat strep test in the office after she saw my exudative throat. i watched them run it in the lab. the sample got all foamed up when some reagent was added, and the tech said, “ooh, foam. that means it’s going to be positive.” my preceptor overheard this and said, “if it’s positive, i’m sending you home with a shot of ceftriaxone!”
one would think that after 9 days at home, i would be horrified by the idea of being sent there to just lie around and study and mope and watch daytime TV. however, i’m sad to report that the idea didn’t sound all that unappealing. after all, i didn’t get to enjoy any of my sick-time! i was either much too hot, much too cold, or much too swimmy-headed to do much of anything. over the course of my lethargic 9-day thermoregulating/medicating frenzy, i spent a lot of time thinking about just how well i could be using the time if i only felt up to it.
and this is why it is a very, very good thing that i only have 1 clinical workday left in this clerkship year. because i want my time back, and i want it now.
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