After 4-weeks at the VA hospital, I’ve learned a lot more about practicing medicine outside the sanctity of a large academic hospital – like having to wait an hour for the CT tech to come in for a head scan in the middle of the night, or even worse, waiting an hour for anesthesia to roll out of bed for an emergent intubation while we stood there bagging our hypoxic patient. I also got better at drawing blood, especially when the nurse refuses to do it. As a member of the code team in the MICU, I even got a taste of “code green” (psych code) on my first call night, which involved me running after a crazy old vet with his IV dangling from his arm, hospital gown flapping in the wind, and his naked behind exposed to me as he eloped from the hospital. I guess one of the great things about internship is that it always manages to keep life interesting.

After a gloomy 2-week-long black cloud on the ward service, even the ICU at the VA Hospital seems like a breath of fresh air. The service is lighter, my cloud seems whiter, and after election day last week, the skies appear ever brighter. I’ve also recently discovered an ingenious piece of software called PlayOn. Still under beta testing, the program can stream video content from both Hulu and Netflix directly to my PS3, and thus, my large-screen TV. This has unlocked a whole Pandora’s box of TV shows to procrastinate with, including the first seasons of 30 Rock and Heroes, as well as new episodes of Terminator and SNL. So much to watch … so little time. By the way, photos from our Japan trip are posted here – enjoy!