I'm in my second to last week of Family Medicine - things have gotten even more routine feeling, especially since my current preceptor is a little more relaxed even than the first one. He's great, just very chill, so he doesn't really pressure me to make SOAP notes and such. I'm glad all the doctors have such good bedside manner, except that one that I mentioned before who had the difficulty communicating. There was also this other doctor I was with one day who sounded tired/bored the whole time, no real emotional changes in his voice, but that's beside the point.
This week there have been a few interesting cases - we saw a woman who had a gastric bypass who "felt like she had something stuck in her throat" and was feeling nauseous and unable to drink liquids. She ended up having to be sent to the ER to get her esophagus checked and sure enough she had a bolus of food stuck in her lower esophagus. I feel like most of the presentations I am seeing in the office are familiar to me now and I have a pretty good idea of what medications and treatment plans to use.
Today I was with the sports medicine doctor again and confirmed that he will write me a letter of recommendation - I just need to email him my stuff. It had been a while since I saw him (2 weeks), so I was glad our previous dynamic was still intact. This afternoon my current preceptor and I went to do a home visit for a patient we saw previously in the office who is now on hospice care for his metastatic melanoma. As far as terminal patients go, this one is rather fortunate - he is 86 years old, has two great-grandchildren, his wife of 66 years is still mobile and caring for him, and his daughter is helping as well, and he doesn't live in a nursing facility, he is at the home of he and his wife. My preceptor essentially went over the basics for hospice - making sure he's eating and drinking, that he doesn't have any pain, and managing side effects of pain medications (constipation, which can cause secondary pain). The wife talked to me a fair amount, and we did a check up with the patient, who has had a lot of family visits and support. It would be horrible to know you only have a month or two left at best, but if that were the case, his situation is probably one of the more fortunate. At the end they gave my preceptor two bottles of wine (it's Napa) and he ended up giving me one of them - a 2009 Rose Syrah. I imagine as a doctor in Napa he gets a lot of gifts of wine from patients - and for good reason, he's a very nice and thorough physician.
I have finished all the "modules" for my Family Medicine rotation, so now I need to finish the last two quizzes and start reading/preparing for my end of rotation exam. Sometime next week I will ask Dr. Cotter if he is willing to write me a letter of recommendation - I feel like it will be odd having all my recommendations from Kaiser Family Medicine doctors, but since I am considering family medicine and have gotten along great at Kaiser, this will be very helpful. The sports medicine doctor (the associate dean of our clinical education) may also be the one who writes my Dean's letter, which would be good since I actually know him - versus the main dean of clinical education is not very well known to me, aside from his bad advice regarding USMLE vs COMLEX for those on the border. Time to get some light exercise in and eat and study...
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