Musings of a Working Woman

I've got two days of work under my belt! So exciting. I wasn't too nervous on the first day and saw seven patients. I've decided Internal Medicine is a tad complicated and they tried to give me not too complex patients. The simplest thing I saw the first day was a urinary tract infection and even then they had dementia, was more confused due the infection, and were on Coumadin. So then I'm like oh crap... what can antibiotic least interferes with Coumadin?? So I run out and ask the Coumadin clinic PA and she says just pick one... they all interact.
Every patient I saw on my first day I asked a provider something about so there is definitely a huge learning curve. Luckily where I work I have 9 providers to choose from and all of them pretty much know my knowledge base and are open to me asking questions that I feel as if I should know.
The first day I spent the lunch break tapping a joint that got diagnosed with pseudogout. Now I hate orthopedics with a passion. I'm on my 3rd patient and I have this huge swollen knee in an elderly man. So I get an X-ray and I'm like arthritis, meniscal tear... Luckily I got to go ask my provider and he's like looks like pseudogout let's tap it. I didn't get to tap the joint my first day but it was cool to be involved in. Maybe I'll get to tap the next one :)
Later on my first day I had a patient newly started on prenisone for a different diagnosis who was now short of breath. I'm like.... prednisone is supposed should make her asthma better.... eek..... Anyways.... got through it.

My nurse is awesome... She recently graduated from Dartmouth and wants to go PA school after re-evaluating her pre-med track. So basically super smart and very capable. I already love her.

So today my second day I only saw 4 patients and had much more free time. Did spend two hours on a physical just for fun... Hey I had all afternoon. My patient was soaking it up. Will try not to get in the habit in the future. I think my employer is looking for productivity.

IT is the weirdest thing to hear people call patients for me and say hey I'm calling from Sunshine John's office. I'm like I have an office.... responsibility...

Anyways pretty excited. I really like where I am working. Feel pretty supported by people. But worn out. Glad tomorrow is Wednesday and it's my day off! sweet!

Another note... God is doing amazing things.
Just got back from Women's Bible study tonight. We talked about God's big heartedness and how while we were still sinner's Jesus to died for us. I just felt a closeness to the wonderful women there and felt like the Holy Spirit was really speaking to us and moving us to a closer relationship with God.

We also had another meeting about church planting Sunday night. Our pastor came to this one and we have a meeting with people from the Oregon conference tomorrow about what steps we need to take towards church planting. God is doing awesome things. WE have been praying about this for 5 years and I feel like God is finally saying now is the time and these are the people. So keep praying.