Saturday, December 22, 2007

Not so much as planned

Instead of catching babies last night, I decided to have food poisoning instead.

I went in for a few hours. I was grumpy to begin with, because I found that one of the residents who kind of made my week miserable was also on call. I've worked 5 shifts with her, and I don't think she's ever made eye contact with me or the other med student on. Unless she's ridiculously high functioning autistic, that is not cool.

Anyway, after missing a chance to deliver a baby because it was coming out OP (occiput posterior - face up, the position that often causes "back labor") and needed to be vacuum assisted, I started feeling not so great. I had a small amount of "sentinel emesis" (the warning before it gets really bad) an got sent home. I thought I was in the clear. But no. I don't know that I got much sleep between the hours of 9 p.m. and 5 a.m. I've never had food poisoning before. This was a new level of aggressiveness of GI irritation for me. And the pain was pretty intense too.

B kept trying to do something to help, but I couldn't keep down any of the liquids he wanted to provide. At one point, he asked if there was anything at all he could do. I said, "No, not unless you have a secret stash of Zofran I don't know about." Forget stealing Fentanyl, Zofran is the med that I'd be in danger of stealing if I were an anesthesiologist. We entertained going to the ER, but decided that I like the comfort of my own bathroom. Also, we're med students, and we don't like going to the doctor.

In conclusion, no solstice baby catching, more sleep than I originally planned on, and I'm left with weakness, dehydration and a day to watch TV and knit while I recover.

Tomorrow I go to West Virginia. Happy Holidays, everyone!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm taking the fact that you are well enough to post that you are still improving. Don't let it fool you - rest and knit. There could be time to knit something for someone who labored for over 30 hours to deliver you. Happily, you weren't OP.

twinsetjan said...

And I'm happy to see by your mom's post to our blog that you looked pretty good on Christmas. Sorry to hear you were feeling crappy. (!!)