So, I'm back to writing where nobody is reading. It took a while to get back thanks to that medical school thing that I'm doing on the side. But, I'm here, and I have good news.
I have discovered a new syndrome. I discovered it because I came down with it about a week ago. It's called Steinberg syndrome obviously (since all doctors, or in my case future doctors, feel the need to slap their names on a collection of symptoms). It's main symptoms are fatigue, a stiff neck, behavior changes, abdominal discomfort, and constipation. It hits a very select population usually between the ages of 21-30 and affects both males and females equally. My syndrome also goes by another name, medicalstudentitis.
Ok, so if you haven't figured it out yet, I'm being fascious. I've basically described what every medical student experiences due to late nights studying (fatigue, behavioral changes), constantly being hunched over a book (stiff neck), and drinking too much coffee (abdominal discomfort and constipation). This is pretty much my life most days, but especially this past week as a result of a midterm, quiz, and 140 skill physical examination that I had to do in front of an attending from Stroger Cook County Hospital. Lets just say I've had more relaxing weeks in my life.
Also, on a side note, I've always heard the stories and such about Cook County Hospital. You hear about the crazy people that are there, the rare diseases you see, the rare presentations of somewhat common diseases, etc. You also hear about how they are understaffed and require doctors to wheel their patients to X-Ray or the lab because they don't have others to do the pushing. But, what I was not made aware of was how difficult it was to just get a simple ID badge made. I have tried now on 4 different occasions to get and ID made. One time the machine was broken, another time they ran out of blank ID card. To top it all off, Stroger has a strict policy that they only make 35 new IDs per day. That's it. So if you show up at 10:00 a.m. (they open at 8) and they've already made 35 for the day, you have to come back another time. Ridiculous. Clearly, I have to keep on going to eventually get one but wouldn't you think there would be some other, more efficient way for them to do this. This is just another clear example of how nobody cares about Stroger when they should since its the only public hospital in the city.
