What I've learned this week:

So it's been a long week, and I felt the need to vent on a couple of things. I hope it doesn't sound like I'm not liking ID, because I really am, and a bunch of funny things happen every day. They're often more entertaining in retrospect, when you're not so tired. Here are a few things I've learned this week:


When NOT to consult your local Infectious Diseases (ID) service:

1. When your patient has a fever caused by the medicine you just gave him. This is especially bad when they've had a fever, say, after every one of the last TEN times you've given him this same medicine, and when his vitals are perfectly stable, and he's sitting up in bed eating a cheeseburger.

2. DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT, consult ID for a possible C.difficile infection when your patient has diarrhea immediately after you give him Senekot, Colace, and Mag….

(this happened this week…no, I am not kidding, they seriously did!)

3. Do not request an official consult at 6pm Friday night, on a patient that hasn't even had the faintest beginnings of a workup, and ask us what prophylactic antibiotics to give for the infection that they almost certainly do not have.

4. Do not ask us to clear your patient as "absolutely, positively not infected with a single germ" on Friday, for a surgery that is next Wednesday. How the patient looks right now has no bearing on what he'll look like next week. Especially if his grandkids with chicken pox come to visit over the weekend.

5. If you are going to put your non-infected patient on a whole regimen of non-indicated, inappropriate antibiotics no matter what we say, please don't consult us and make us go through the hassle of writing up a note on your patient with borderline personality disorder. Especially when you have already decided that Vancomycin is a spectacular first-line gram negative-coverage drug.

Other random thoughts:

1. Aplastic anemia and 16 beers a day are a GREAT combo! I am totally kidding - do NOT try that at home!

2. Be nice to your siblings. Someday you may need a stem cell transplant, and if you're a jerk, they might all be "too busy" to swing by and help you out.

3. If you have an immune deficiency, and someone in your naked yoga class has a bigger body piercing in a certain part, let it be. Keeping up with the Joneses only applies to houses and cars.