Open mouth; insert foot

Two, yea, three things of note happened whilst on call last night.

1. I finished a case around 2330 and crawled into bed at midnight. The pager was silent. I awoke at 0757, three minutes before my alarm was set to go off. I got more sleep on call than on any night for the preceeding two weeks. That's how a call should be!
2. While stopping by another first-year resident's operating room (for reasons that do not need discussed here), the surgeon asked for 4000 units of intravenous heparin. Because I was standing between the resident and the cart, I opened a syringe, drew up 10cc of the standard concentration of heparin (1000 units per cc) and was about to label it when the resident took it from me. "What's this?" he asked. "Heparin." "What concentration?" "The normal--1000 units per cc." "Then why did you give me 10cc's?" "Because the surgeon might ask you to give more later." Without a word, he then proceeded to open the cart's drawer, and pulled out another vial of heparin. "Was this what you used?" "Yes." At this point, he looked into the trash, rescued the empty vial from which I'd drawn up the syringe, and compared it to the one in the drawer. At this point, the surgeon asked if the heparin was in yet. Only then did he administer it!
3. I was talking to a patient whom I was originally going to take care of, but who was now going to have anesthesia administered by another resident. She'd requested that I take care of her (since she'd had me twice before) but it didn't work out. We were in the preoperative holding area, and she was going to have her surgery in an hour or two. Feeling a little bad, I gave the nearly-eighty-year-old's hand a squeeze and said, "If you're still around tomorrow, I'll come by and see you." The double entendre, unfortunately, was lost on no one!

Nessun Dorma

Can you get tired of the aria? (Probably. That's where the discipline of self-retraint comes in useful.) One of the anesthesia attendings showed me this youtube video of an amateur singing it. Quite good. See for yourself:

Paul Potts sings Nessun Dorma

His voice has a certain resonance, clarity, and intensity. And one of my favorite aspects of the video was watching the female judge's expressions and reactions. Note her nearly gasping for breath at the musical climax! The sweeping camera shots at the very end of the aria are a little cheesy, but still effective.

May: A retrospective study

After doing so well by consistently writing posts in April, I'm surprised that the month of May has flown by with nary a post. In the next few days, I'll try to do a little catch-up writing. (n.b.: I'm going to cheat on the dates by timing the posts as if I'd written them on the days the events happened. If this is the first post you're reading since the death of Rostropovich, then scroll back to April 28th and go chronologically.)

I should mention too that as I sit down to write this fine Memorial Day morning, I'm sipping a homemade latte from my Plymouth, Massachusetts mug--one of my favorites. I'm pleased to 1) have discovered the stove-top espresso maker that belongs to Brad, the guy we're subletting from, and 2) find that making espresso is remarkably easy, especially with a gas stove.

What happens in Roosevelt Island...

Although I was on overnight call on Saturday, the extra day off for Memorial Day on Monday will be much appreciated. I got about 6 hours' sleep at the hospital--enough to make Sunday enjoyable. Our church combined services for one bigger service at 10:30, and I enjoyed seeing people from the later service whom I don't usually see.

After church, Clay, Dustin, Mavis, Mauricio, Jasmin, Kristin, and I dined outdoors at Sezz Medi on wood-fired pizza and wine.

The next few hours were spent helping move Mavis from her apartment at 163rd down to her new Harlem residence at 116th Street. All her belongings fit in a minivan and her car. It was a hot afternoon in Harlem today, with no shade on the sunny, apartment-lined street. When I first visited the city, I thought fire-escapes made an otherwise pleasant street look tacky. Now they've really grown on me! Jasmin's favorite quotation of the afternoon was when I remarked, "Jasmin, you lift [boxes] like a man, but dress like a woman."

Mauricio, Mavis, Clay and I pondered where to eat dinner after finishing the move. We briefly toyed with a spontaneous road trip to Boston, but decided on my suggestion of Roosevelt Island instead. Getting there involved driving over to East Harlem at 125th Street, riding the 4 train down to 59th Street, and then the sky tram across the East River to the narrow island.

A bus completed our journey to the heart of the island. We felt naive as we pulled out our MetroCards to board the bus, while everyone else deposited a quarter in the slot by the driver. There was not a stop sign to be seen as we rode, and another rider advised us that there were exactly two places to eat: Trelli's and a chinese place.

We opted for Trelli's, which was surprisingly good and inexpensive. A calamari appetizer, chicken cordon bleu, and a shared slice of cheesecake were all delicious and very reasonably priced for Manhattan.

After dinner we walked down to the river and enjoyed the cool salt breeze coming off the water. It was decided that Trelli's on Roosevelt Island would become our secret meeting place, and the phrase was coined, "What happens on Roosevelt Island, stays on Roosevelt Island."

William's defense

In celebration of William's (successful) defense of his dissertation, my home fellowship group and a few others convened at my apartment tonight for champagne, strawberries, and carrot cake. Katherine later told me that carrot cake is William's favorite, so I guess I made a good choice.

Ezer and Jan were able to join us, as were Nader, Melvin, and Reyko. W&K will be leaving soon for his new position at Baylor, my alma mater.