"The commode story.... A f***ing story about a f***ing job, man."

RESERVOIR DOCS

JOE: So, you guys like to tell jokes, huh?
Gigglin' and laughin' like a bunch of young broads sittin' in a schoolyard.
Well, let me tell a joke....

DR. RED

“Okay, I don’t mean to be rude to anyone but we just have a lot of things to go over. Let’s stick to the agenda,” Dr. Red says at the head of the table.

You wouldn’t know she was a doctor by looking at her. By that I mean, she wasn’t wearing a whitecoat or stethoscope. Same goes for the other nine doctors in the new group that I joined this month.

And as a petite orange-haired woman with a pixie-ish smile and flashing eyes, I am sure she’s gotten more than her share of “are you my nurse” sexist comments from the old boy patients. It’s an occupational hazard for female physicians. I've seen Dr. Red's infectiously fun side, but at the meeting it’s all business. And politics.

DR. BLONDE

MR. BLONDE: Torture you? That's a good idea. I like that.

The new hospitalist group I joined is 70% female, with me, Dr. Blonde, and Dr. White as the other 30%.

“One thing about our group is that we don’t take doctors just out of residency. Oddly enough, they made that rule after they hired me just out of residency,” Dr. Blonde smiles.

I’m new to everyone here except for Dr. Blonde, the cowboy of The Group. He actually lived in the same medical dorm that I did, although he was a few years older and working on his MD/PhD.

Back then I was the shy quiet guy in the house, while Dr. Blonde would have been the spooky quiet guy. Blonde is tall, lanky, with dirty blonde hair and glasses that seem to always hide his eyes, no matter from which angle you looked at him.

“I am a procedure hound. I’ll stick just about anything I can,” Dr. Blonde said to me the first night I met him since medical school. By procedures, he meant skin biopsies, femoral vein lines, jugular lines, or needling abdomens, lung spaces and spinal taps. As well as things most internists do not do.

“The oncology service even has me do their bone marrows (biopsies),” he said proudly.

I’ve never heard of a hospitalist who did bone marrow biopsies before. It’s the most painful procedure you can do at the bedside. One tech told me that when it really hurts, that’s how you know you’re in the marrow. You’re not supposed to tell the patients that part. A lot of people won’t perform marrow biopsies because it’s so painful.

“I love doing bone marrows,” Dr. Blonde grins again.

Sun Su and his sister Ooseung. Looking a little early 20th Century.

DR. BROWN

MR. BROWN: Mr. Brown? That sounds too much like Mr. Shit.

“Our group is held in very high regard at St. Azrael. We expect all of our physicians to uphold this standard,” Dr. Brown told me during that first dinner interview months ago.

With those words in mind, my first couple of days on the job did not go well.

First off, the cheap ass pager I got wouldn’t work in the hospital apparently.

Perhaps buying a pager at a place that also had tanning booths, haircare products, car accessories, and a nails salon, all in the same room, wasn’t the best choice.

Secondly, I couldn’t get into the computer system – and everything is computerized. According to the credentialling secretary, I wasn’t supposed to even be in the hospital yet.

“Hmm. That’s a bit limiting,” Dr. Blonde commented when I informed him.

Dr. Brown sympathized with my situation.

“I was seeing patients for a month before I was ‘official.’ I just pretended I didn’t know it was such a big deal. They really chewed me out about it,” she recalled fondly.

MR. PINK: You kill anybody?
MR. WHITE: A few cops.
MR. PINK: No real people?
MR. WHITE: Just cops.

“Have you ever been named before, Scott?” she asked candidly about the bane of being a doctor – litigation.

“Yeah. One case was dismissed. The other was settled,” I answered with shame. Both cases were from when I was just out of residency. I’ve learned some things about people and medicine from them. Neither of them encouraging.

“Ooh, I know how it is. I’ve been named in four cases. It’s an awful ordeal, isn’t it?” Dr. Brown’s enthusiasm waned as her faint wrinkles waxed for a moment from all the legal crap she's dealt with. Her simple comments were the first words of comfort I’ve felt regarding the whole experience.

“We’re a private group,” she explained, “We don’t have to take every patient if we don’t want to. Some we can’t take because insurance won’t allow. Another rule is that if someone fires one of us, they fire all of us. They get a new group to take care of them, but it’s not us. We aren’t getting burned by that again.”

Back at The Empire, it was just the opposite. When a patient fired one of the other doctors, or even one of my bosses (administrative docs), they’d call it “an administrative case” and since shit flows downhill, the administration would dump the difficult patient on me or one of my colleagues at the bottom of Shit Hill. For the most part though, I usually got along great with these difficult personalities. They just took more time to deal with and a lot more patience. In my last month there, one patient actually fired my boss, and requested me by name.

“She’s crazy. You have any problems with her?” the fired administrator asked me the next day.

“Nah. It just takes her a while to warm up to people,” I said with a wink in my heart.

Shit flows downhill but with a little patience, you can use it to grow flowers.

DR. WHITE

MR. BLONDE: I was wonderin' when I can come back and,
you know, do some real work.

With all the newness around me, the new hospital, new job, new computer system, new politics, it was nice to return to something familiar. The patients.

My first patient was a jaundiced old man with a liver mass.

“Sounds like cancer,” Dr. White summed up as he helped me learn the new computer entry system.

“Yeah, the G.I. consult is already in and I put his meds and C.T. orders in the computer. I entered orders for some mucomyst since he’s got mild renal insufficiency along with fluids for the contrast study,” I answered.

“Already? You’re learning the system pretty fast.”

Dr. White is probably the oldest member of the group and he has the most contact with administration. He seems to understand the people behind the machine, or vice versa. Despite (or due to) this deeper knowledge, he also seems the most calm and laid back.

“Our group has a great relationship with a few of the surgical groups and they have been very loyal to us in return.

“Sometimes you gotta talk a little testosterone with the surgeons though,” Dr. White says jokingly, “They like their cars, sports and hunting. You know how surgeons are.”

Hmm, I thought, I like boxing and mixed martial arts competitions like UFC and Pride. I even like WWE pro-wrestling.

Then I realized I was thinking about video games and not the actual sports.

Maybe we can just talk about chicks.

In video games I mean.

Amy as a gangsta.

MEDEA SINCORPORATED

MR. PINK: Do you know what this is?
It's the world's smallest violin playing just for the waittresses.

So, I love my new hospitalist job. I like not being treated like a McDonald’s employee. I like starting fresh. I like the schedule, made by hospitalists to prevent burnout. As opposed to The Empire’s schedule which was made by administration to save money.

Everyone in the group is an equal partner and a legal separate corporate entity, including me. I have an accountant. My own lawyer. I've even got a P.O. Box. We are each our own boss.

My next patient was a little old lady with a little congestive heart failure. I’ve never met this particular woman before but it was good to see her again. I haven’t really been away for the past couple of years but it was good to be back again.

I left a corporate hospital to become my own corporation. I had to leave the place that trained me to be a physician to really feel like a physician.

I like being happy that I’m a doctor again.

*BEEP BEEP*

“Uh, hi Scott, this is Blonde again. Just wanted to let you know that our meetings are usually more social occasions. We’re having it at Red’s house this weekend. It’s bring your own beer, if you happen to drink. It’ll be fun. See you then.”

It’s good not being a doctor sometimes too.

MR. PINK: Why can't we pick out our own colors?
JOE: ... It don't work. You get four guys fighting over who's gonna be Mr. Black. So forget it.

Sun Su looking classically dapper. And shoeless and sockless.

_______________________________________

Shake that jigae, yuhjuh.

Just a much appreciated pick-me-up picture of Mira in one of my shirts.