I just realized that $6 for dinner in the cafeteria can go pretty far if you know what to order. Last night, my dinner consisted of a grilled cheese and tomato sandwich ($2.10), a small bowl of soup ($1.50), a side of mashed potatoes ($1.00), and a side of string beans ($1). For drinks and dessert, I just grabbed juice and pudding from the patient kitchen. That’s like a 5-course meal! I feel bad leeching from the kitchen though, especially since my recent track record on the new general pediatrics service hasn’t been that great. Of the last 4 kids I admitted, one ended up in intensive care, and 2 are being transferred to the in-patient psych ward. Hey, at least I’m discharging my patients … whether by getting them sicker or driving them crazy! 🙂

It appears that my review article has finally been published online at Nature.com. It’s particularly exciting this time because there are several reviews on the same topic in this focus issue, and ours is the featured article! I’m actually not sure what this means, but I’ll just assume that it means that mine is better! 🙂 Unfortunately, I haven’t read it over yet since work’s been busy as usual. Of course, I’ve also gotten my hands on a new toy recently, which adds yet another distraction to work. Actually, the Wi-Fi feature is absolutely amazing with Tetris DS. So if anyone’s a tetris fan, I’m definitely up for a challenge!

After my 4-year hiatus, returning to the wards has been an exciting yet daunting transition for me. It didn’t help, of course, that I started with pediatric cardiology at Children’s Hospital, which isn’t exactly your typical patient population. I mean, I may not know how to care for a baby with fever or diarrhea, but if the kid has tetralogy of Fallot, I’m your man. In fact, after 2 weeks on the service, I was beginning to think that hypoplastic left heart syndrome was an epidemic in Boston. Unfortunately, just when I was getting to know what I was doing, when I finally figured out why the interns laughed when they called me a Bidirectional Glenn, I was switched to another service. It’s kind of weird going into general pediatrics now. Knowing little else, I think I’ll just have to put congenital heart disease as the top differential for every patient.