Day 3

Today was PAINFULLY slow. No exciting patients in the trauma room, no doctors to follow around and ask questions, not even any gurneys to clean. Very few patients went to X-ray and CT. The technician who let me help the physician on the first day was there. He recognized me, and I went with him to see how an EKG is set up. It was cool because earlier that day in my physiology lab we worked with EKGs and analyzed the traces, so when the traces were printed I knew what I was looking at. The tech didn't know what he was looking at. I thought that was weird - he does that kind of stuff for a living, wouldn't he at one point be curious about what kind of data he's printing? Ever? It's so mundane without actually knowing what you're trying to get.

I took a patient to X-ray, and I told the radiologist that the patient was there. I called the patient by name; he was a Latino patient and I pronounced his name properly and the radiologist laughed at me. Weird guy. Though I suppose amusement would come easily to me too if I had to be there late every night looking at X-rays.

One weird thing about today was that I saw my PI in the emergency room. He was there for chest pain, poor guy. He had been there since 8 PM and was there when I left. I hope he gets better. When I left, they still didn't know exactly what was going on with him. Hopefully it's not too bad.

I left 45 minutes early because I was exhausted and there wasn't anything for me to do. I will make up my time another time. That's Day 3.