Self-diagnosis

Wow, I thought the paranoid self-diagnosing would stop after Boards, but that turned out to be false. I’m just using different books, now.

Things I’ve diagnosed myself with, using Step Up to Medicine
From the week of August 3, 2008.

Diffuse Esophageal Spasm
What: Uncoordinated spontaneous contraction of the esophagus, preventing or causing painful swallowing of food.
Why I totally had it: Sometimes when I swallow, food feels like it’s getting stuck, and then I get chest pain between the clavicle down to the sternum.
But actually: I really need to chew my food more thoroughly, and not inhale my food all at once.

Home is where the heart is (not really)

Today was a Sunday spent on call, which meant that I had a full day of work, plus on call duties (haha, I said “duties” — this will get funnier as I tell my story) until 8:30 PM. Whew. I came home so tired and hungry that I bought dinner at the first restaurant I saw after getting off the bus and ate it in 10 minutes at home.

One of my patients came in with anemia that had never been investigated, and the anemia was severe enough that they were thinking of transfusing her. One of the things to check when someone has anemia is to see if they are bleeding from the stomach or intestines. To test this, we do a stool guaiac test. To get stool guaiac, you either have to wait for the patient to have a bowel movement and go after the stools with a swab, or you do a digital rectal exam on the patient and then smear the gloved finger on the stool guaiac test paper. And by “you,” I mean the medical student; and by “the medical student,” I mean me. (Man, you guys are really wishing you’d never asked how med school was going, huh?)

I was reading the directions on the stool guaiac test kit, and noticed that the test kit was manufactured by Beckman Coulter, with an address in Fullerton, CA! How weird is that? This stool guaiac test kit came from the same enormous office building that I drove past twice a day, every day, on the way to and from high school for four years. I can totally picture the building now, in my mind. It’s on Harbor Blvd. just north of Imperial Highway, and I think south of Lambert. I think it’s now across the street from an Albertsons/Sav-on distribution center.

Awww, Fullerton. I guess this just means that no matter how far I go or how weird my life gets, my past homes are always right there with me. Sometimes covered in stool.

(By the way, gathering the necessary items for the stool guaiac test made my front left coat pocket home to a seriously weird collection of items: 4 vinyl gloves (I double-gloved for this), 2 packets of lubricant, 1 stool guaiac test kit, 1 reagent bottle, and stickers with the patient’s name and date of birth printed on them. Sometimes I feel like MacGyver. But with lube.)