Above: Sky high in 2007 on my first trip to Dominica. Note the turboprop propeller.I LIVED THE REAL LIFE VERSION OF
LOOK WHO'S TALKING.
7:10 AM - One of the babies starts to cry. Like I said in the previous entry, I talk and bargain with the little kid. Okay, let's make a deal. I'll cover you up if you're going to cooperate with me when I listen to your heart.
Back up a step...
7:08 AM - I'm practicing a head to toe physical exam on one of the kids in the ward. Now, one of the greatest tools that us doctors have is the stethoscope, designed to amplify sounds within the body wherever it is placed. I'm about to auscultate the baby's chest for lung sounds and heart sounds. However, once placed the flat face of the stethoscope on the newborn, he/she started to shiver. I notice:
Oh shoot... My steth is cold!
I start to rub the base of the stethoscope to warm it up... but it was too late... by the time I was listening to another area of the chest for heart sounds, the baby started to cry loudly. Do the math: Crying + Sound transmission to the chest + Loud + Amplifying stethoscope = "Ouch to my ears!"
7:11 AM - As the baby was crying, I decide to go ahead and carry the baby in my arms to the nearby window to see the snow that was falling down. My "magic touch" includes a series of clicks and gooing sounds I make with my mouth (some of my group mates have called it pretty entertaining). I know the baby can't exactly see out there, but as he/she looked out, the crying slowly came to a stop and the eyes opened. And for odd reasons, that brought a smile to my face.
For some odd reason, I could see this happen over and over again, and I could not imagine myself not smiling at that sight.
And it was then, the babies in the ward started to cry one after another... I felt they honestly were communicating to each other (take that, John Travolta and Kirstie Alley!).
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When I enter through the huge door to the lobby of the hospital every morning, it's like a whole new world. No, we aren't talking about entering some newfound medical discovery, or even into a hospital cafeteria, where - for some - describing it as a "new world" isn't exactly a good thing.
Think about this. Let's say that the prevalence of some disease or condition - and this could go for any of the thousands of them - was 1 per 100,000 in the whole United States (not just the contiguous 48, but also Alaska, Hawaii, and just for kicks, throw in Puerto Rico). That doesn't sound too bad, does it? That's a 0.001% chance of running into someone who has that condition. Well, there's a lot of factors that affect my chances of running into it, but I've already noticed two that have increased my chances of running into them:
1. The Hospital Setting - Think about it, I'm always running into sick people... sick people concentrate in hospitals. Thus, due to a less of a chance of running into someone who's not sick, this could make some uncommon condition much more common to hospital staff.
2. Local Prevalence - Depending on where you are, risk factors for conditions are more prominent in one region of the world than the other. One good example was there used to be a higher incidence of goiter in the midwest than by the east and west coast. Why? We just weren't eating enough fish (a source of iodine, a nutrient that prevents goiters). So for many cases, me being in Chicago and in a specific location of the city may increase my risk into running into some special cases. I'd say what I've seen, but I'd probably break HIPAA confidentiality if I did.
So, that's what I mean by walking into a "whole new world." Even in just my first week, I've run into stuff I don't run into where I live (suburbia) but I get to see within the city limits of Chicago. I just find an opportunity to see rare things often very cool.
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