It was sure nice to get home again. Evidently, I was more tired than I thought I was because I asserted that rye liquor was made from potatoes and I tried to walk into the men's bathroom at the rest stop. Nothing a three hour nap can't cure (or at least help). I did have a nice nap and things seemed much better. I sorted a little bit through the mail that came while I was gone, including the final shirt from Nordstrom and then played "Angry Birds" and other computer games with Ellie for a while and ate yogurt and a peach, neither of which tasted good. It is especially sad to me that the peach tasted wrong because peaches are my absolute favorite fruit (and maybe favorite food item) in the whole world. Right now, only water tastes good, but I did this before and know it gets better eventually.
I do not have any planned medical visits for several days now. I go visit the Norris Cotton (in Manchester!) for labs on Monday, but none until then. Currently my labs are all pretty normal: platelets 146, WBC 2.9, hgb 11.5, ANC 2,630. If I understand correctly, my white count and maybe my red cells will plummet over the next few days but my platelets should hold out OK (although my platelets are so wacky who knows what they will do). As my white count drops, chances are I will feel less energetic so there may be more napping and less blogging in my near future. Hopefully there will be no more attempts to walk into the wrong bathroom.
So, let's talk a little more about doctor/patient relationships. When I was a student, I did not understand that when I went off service, people would want me to say goodbye. I would figure that I wasn't really doing anything for them so why would they care if I was there or some other student was. When I went off service, I would not say goodbye or even let them know usually. I cannot believe I behaved like that, but I didn't know better and no one actually taught me until about partway through my first internal medicine rotation, I saw my senior resident say to a patient, "I just wanted you to know I'm going off service tomorrow and you'll have Dr. Smith instead of me. You'll like her." OK, then, that's how it's done.
It surprises me that not everybody does that; we're actually not interchangable and the relationship matters. For all of us.
I am going to take my again tired little self up to bed. I suspect I will enjoy tonight's sleep and hope you sleep well, too.
I love reading your thoughts on Doctor/Patient relations. It's the one thing on which I am unwilling to compromise. It makes moving and having to find new doctors every few years quite overwhelming but I usually end up finding good people it just sometimes takes me longer than it might take other people in my family. It's worth the extra time. I read a lot and am usually familiar with a lot of things that might be important to whatever is going on with me. There's always something! I love that you think about these things. It never occurred to me before that you might actually THINK about these things before talking to a patient but it's clear that you really do because I can remember conversations with you about whatever issues I've had. So reading about this from your perspective has really helped me think about exactly what I might need when I have to look for new doctors.
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