OMG, I made you bleed!

Was offered, but frightened, it left me declining
My confidence waning, my skill insufficient
Preceptor, he ordered, and I without whining
Did take it and stab it, embark on this mission!

Wow wow wow.

I think there's a moment in everyone's life where you do something for the first time and it blows you away because your studies and skill-building and hard work have been leading up to this moment and then you do it and it's over and it's great.

(Now I know that I'm a little out of order with the travelogue but it'll eventually get complete, and please check back and scroll down to the appropriate time period, because I'll add to it slowly. This was just too good to not blog about.)

I did my first Family Medicine Longitudinal Experience (FMLE) session today. I'm one of the few in our class who gets to participate in an elective that gives me time to shadow a family doctor for six afternoons.

When I walked into the clinic, I met Dr. Sid, who's super nice and super cool, and as we walked to go see our first patient, who needed a flu shot and another injection he asks me: "Do you want to give the shots?"

I answered with a huge and loud "NOoooo." I just wasn't comfortable. Anyways, he made the fourth year student (CC4) do it, and explained what she was doing as she did it.

And then later, when another patient needed a flu shot, I gave it to her. I did it. I filled the syringe with 0.5 cc's of vaccine, I cleaned her skin, and then I jabbed her, IM in the deltoid, and pushed the syringe. I wasn't even nervous. I was a little nervous leading up to the jab, but when all's said and done, it was okay. And it was kind of cool.

I'm not the most excited about all this shadowing stuff, but I really enjoyed today. And I'm sure there will come a time when I'll think that giving injections is just the worst thing in the world, but for today, it was exciting.

Funny though, how Dr. Sid will let me give vaccines, but won't let me do any physical exam manoevres (even take blood pressure) on the patients. Oh well, everyone has their own teaching style.

But today was awesome -- I'm not all that into family medicine, and when it comes down to it, I probably won't become a family doc. But the exposure to real clinical cases was good, and the fact that Dr. Sid quizzed me and made me run differential diagnoses on patients in real time made it a great learning experience. Plus (and this was a huge plus), we only had to see one cough/cold the entire 6 hours I was there (and it was a sinusitis...a real cough/cold). There was a huge range of casese that we saw, and the patients were friendly and funny.

And I got to stick someone with a needle.