ugh

I cannot wait to be done with this.  That is all.

life in the psych ward

There's a lot that goes on in the West Tower (Mental Health Ward) of the Jail.  Much of it isn't really fun to talk about, which is my excuse for slacking on the blog updates lately.  Lots of suicide thoughts, painful back-stories, just lots of stuff nobody should read and I don't really want to write about.  But this week has been really interesting!

Tuesday - Went to Juvenile.  Thought it was going to be fun, and it might have been if the first 2 patients I saw were these two punks.  The "diagnosis" is called "Oppositional Defiance Disorder" and it basically is a psychiatric condition of being a snot-nosed, disrespectful delinquent.  Can you tell how sympathetic I am towards teens suffering from this horrible disease? Please.  Granted, most of these kids have drugged-out parents and pretty rough childhoods, so they don't exactly have the raw materials to become decent citizens.  Still, it's an easy decision for me to choose a different area of medicine to spend my career.  I'm just not patient enough for that kind of attitude.  There are plenty of kids with actual conditions that I'd love to take care of, but I didn't get to witness any of those.  So I'm pretty much done with that idea.

Wednesday - Visited Zale-Lipshy (a hospital) to check out a really interesting treatment for patients with long-standing severe depression... Electroconvulsive Therapy.  VERY COOL!  That morning, I met 3 medical students who were also there to observe ECT.  The four of us met up with the treatment team who explained the treatment, then the patient was anesthetized.  Electrodes were then held to the patient's head and a seizure is induced.  There's very few contraindications, side effects, and the treatment works really well!  One 82 year old patient, with major depression since age 6 (wow), had ECT in 1977 and it didn't recur for almost 15 years!  Beats meds if you ask me.

Today - Talked to a guy who was SUPER DUPER delusional.  Man oh man, he went on and on about this knowledge he has to make meth for really cheap, to make revolutionary electric car and plane batteries (an idea he was presenting to the Marines), to cure heroin addicts using purified OxiClean, and, without getting into too many specifics, was related to the creator of the Mexican Mafia on the west coast.  Yeah... lots of stuff going on with this guy.  In fact, the floor officers were chuckling about the guy before we even saw him. "Oh man, you'll love this patient... verrrry interesting..."  First time I've seen that kind of unbridled psychosis.  Good stuff!

In non-rotation news, I'm really enjoying hanging out with my Jr High youth group guys.  We're playing some paintball this weekend!  Can't wait!

grace & peace,

this is for reals

Among the things I'm learning on rotations is the fact that everyone has different electronic medical records (EMR) systems.  Talk about confusing!  I'm a bit computer retarded too for a 25 year old (weird... I'm halfway thru my 20's?!), so it's even more of a learning curve.  But anyways, this morning I learned how to change medications, order lab studies, and schedule follow up appointments for patients all with a few clicks.  On the drive home it hit me how much power that gave me... especially the meds!  Geez, can they really entrust such important stuff to me?  As the rotations experience becomes more real to me, it's making me feel quite grown up.

Speaking of grown up, I've just begun as a Junior High Youth Group adult leader!  It's something I've been thinking about for over 6 months now, which is my cue that it's not one of my frequent fleeting interests that pans out as nothing more.  But Jr. High is really where I took off as far as my relationship with the Lord goes, and i owe a lot of that to the adults who led us and goofed around with us and loved on us each week.  So I'm really pumped to serve another group of young men and hopefully give them the kind of experiences I had.  Who else voluntarily spends time with a dozen 7th grade boys?  Yeah, I thought not.  You're welcome, society.  :-D

Update: I got to spend some time with the Swahili-speaking patient, (we'll call him Mr. G), today.  He felt better about his general situation, and was very thankful for the verses we had given him.  Praise God for that!!  He asked today for passages from Ephesians, so away I went to print off 3 chapters of the book.  It really makes me happy to do that.  I wonder if it would make me just as happy if the Bible was just another book to me... As in, I wonder if the satisfaction lies in being a provider of comfort for the patient, or if it's magnified to me since the Scripture is also a big part of my life.  Interesting.  That's the best part of psych to me, the close follow up on patients' well being day by day.  I don't know if that'll be enough to steer me towards psychiatry as a career.  Don't hold your breath, haha.  Not going to rule anything out prematurely, of course. ;-)

grace & peace