"Hi, it's Dave"

I've been lazy and haven't updated the pages in quite a while. I had a new news byte that I didn't even upload for the past five months, which is below.

I've been rotating through the UPenn Health System hospitals. So far this internship thing has been a lot easier than I thought it'd be. Being a doc ain't so hard. Once in a while people try to die on my watch, but I'm usually able force them back to their dreary lives.

In the doctoring business, you meet many different people so it's hard to keep names straight. I was recently working with this young and energetic infectious diseases attending physician. Every once in a while I had to page him and talk about patients. I'd tell him who I was over the phone. One day he paged me and he called me Dave.

I didn't really hear him that well, so I thought he might have said "Steve", and I let it go. But then he kept calling me "Dave", over and over and over again. He said it with such confidence and a friendly spanish accent ("Hey Dave!"), and he's such a nice guy, that I felt bad correcting him. I thought that after a couple weeks, we'd each rotate to different services and he would be none the wiser. It got to the point that when I'd page him, he'd say, "Who ees dees?" and I'd say, "...It's Dave."

One day he was talking to my immediate boss (the resident) about one of our patients. They formulated a plan and the attending said, "Let me geeve Dave a call to tell heem about dees." I had told my resident about the infectious diseases doc calling me by the wrong name, and he burst out laughing. "What, what?" he asked. My resident explained the whole thing. They paged me with the plan of saying, "Hey Dave, who ees dees Stephen person who's been signing all of your notes and orders?"

Luckily I had gone home for the day, so their ploy never materialized. The next day, however, he confronted me about my name. I admitted to being "Stephen" and not "Dave". He tsked and said, "Oooh, you embarrassed me!"

In other news, I spent Thanksgiving break in the farmlands of Pennsylvania with Chris Wilson (from the NIH), his fiancee Ruth, and several of his friends. It was great to have a traditional dinner event like that. My brother moved to Manhattan several weeks ago to begin his postdoc at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. He lives in a sweet part of town. My mom paid off $32K of student loans for me. I'm steadily paying her back for it, instead of the government.

I bought a digital piano a few months ago. I have this idea, see, that I'm going to learn to play it real well. So far I'm okay at it, but the neurons may already have lost their youthful rewiring capacity. I'll tell you how it goes. I'm still dreaming of designing beautiful buildings and understanding the brain.

I'm three weeks into internship, at the geriatrics service at the affiliated community hospital. An easy-paced start, despite the 80-hour weeks. So far being an intern is better than being a med student (at Duke). Only time and completion of residency will tell whether or not it will be a sustaining job. Almost everyone I've met has been good to work with. There are a couple of outliers but I suppose that's common in every profession.

I hear the work sucks over at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital. There was a big nurse walkout a few days ago there, and they had to close quite a few patient beds. The stress also brings out the worst in people. I'm learning to deal with it. My goal is to achieve perfect zen when someone is screaming at me and my patients are crumping.

A couple of my best friends from high school, Bao and Khanh, came to visit a few weeks ago. Had a great time with them. No one ever visited me in Durham (why was that?) aside from Dave Plurad, who was there mainly for his younger brother's graduation from Duke. Anyway it was good to catch up with them. Reminded me of my carefree days, which I miss dearly.

Still been thinking about architecture vs. medicine. I wonder what I can do to get the best of both worlds? I have no idea. Maybe it'll be research after all. Or just maintain my hobbies in art. Wish there was more creativity in my life however; for now diagnostic puzzles are the only things that stimulate me, aside from commiseration with fellow housestaff and nurses.

Bad Dream

I had my first bad dream about internship... it was my first day at the Hospital of UPenn, and they had called me to get iv access on an unconscious obese person. It wasn't a person really, I just remember a fat arm with a fat vein on it. I got to the scene, with a fresh medical student shadow who resembled a green student named Jin (sp?) I had worked with last year while I was a subintern. She and I were looking at the arm, and I was trying to tell her something about how to put this enormous IV catheter in the large vein, but it was obvious I had no idea what I was doing. The student kept skeptically silent because she had no real idea herself, but she recognized BS when she saw it. Fortunately there was a person from the IV team who was working on the arm as well (who resembled a seasoned IV team technician I worked with in the VA hospital in Durham) and before I knew it he had established access.

I then realized that I had no idea where my resident was, or which patients I was responsible for on the ward. I looked at a board where the old interns' names were still written along with their pager numbers, and, medical student in tow, went to the nearest phone to page him/her to get the scoop on my patients. I was hoping dearly that the census wouldn't be too large.

I remember also meeting a fellow intern, fresh from medical school, who was an incompetent ball of nerves, and thinking how incompetent I was myself. I said to myself, "Gosh so this is modern medicine."

I moved to Philly last week. It was sort of a pain... had to feed parking meters during the daytime and drive around for spots every so often to avoid tickets (got 2 anyway). Finally today I can rest since I got my zone pass...

I gave away my chinchillas. That was a little sad, even though they weren't very affectionate they were pretty cute and innocent. I think though that they'll be happier with their new owner... a guy who supposedly builds little pens for them to romp around in.

I've been spending all my efforts last week arranging, buying furniture, cleaning up... now I'm looking for a job. I might have a volunteer position lined up shadowing architects at a large firm with a local branch... in addition I've registered at a temp agency, for menial work to pay bills--however no job offers yet. I remember being interested in architecture as a kid, I wonder why I didn't pursue civil engineering at Caltech. Got sorta stuck on the physician path I guess. If anyone is listening out there, you've gotta follow your heart regarding things like this.

Many things have changed since I last updated. Wiggin got sick and died, on 2/19/00. Ming, my good friend from Duke, accompanied me to the vet the night before he was euthanized. I know a rat is a tough animal to treat, but the vet wasn't too helpful. He was pretty smart for a rat, and he even used to lick my hand. I buried him outside my house next to a willow tree facing a pond.

I got a couple of chinchillas (Linus and Feynman) about 3 weeks ago, but we aren't warming up to each other as quickly as with Wiggin. I may give them away soon.

I found a tiny studio apartment in Philadelphia. I figured it'd save on rent so I can repay my med school debt on a dinky resident's salary in record time. I'll be moving there in 2 weeks.

I won't be attending graduation at Duke... the memories of people constantly stepping on one another, juxtaposed with the ceremonious occasion, would be too great a hypocrisy in my mind... although in all honesty those people were a minority. I guess it's a mail-order medical degree for me!

I'm trying to find a job in Philadelphia for the next couple of months. I tell ya, an M.D. ain't worth jack for jobs outside of healthcare. I think I'd have better luck as a recent Caltech graduate landing fun tech jobs...

Match Results

I'm going to the University of Pennsylvania for medical internship and neurology residency training. I'll be in Philadelphia for the next four years starting in June. While I've kind of anticipated some sort of academic medical career, and although generally there has been a great deal of structure in my life, it's always surprising when I look back and see where I've been and where I'm going.

I've been yearning for the West coast ever since I left it, but when am I going back? I think I'm going to promise myself that from now on, I'm going to put what little ambition I have left at bay and decide based more on lifestyle considerations. Maybe I'll see you in California in 2004.

A few minor updates... I changed the color on the contents bar to the left, added one small picture to my art gallery and a photo to my photo album, and reworded some of the text so I didn't sound so snotty -- guess I overdid it initially when I redesigned these pages.

Wiggin, my pet rat whom I rescued from lab, is now over 1 year old. He recently acquired a new larger cage and a clear plastic ball he can roll around in. He's gotten quite fat.

I'm waiting to hear from which neurology program I'm going to in 2001. I should know within a week. Other than waiting, I'm having a fun time working on the cardiology consult team and playing System Shock 2. See you all soon!