In terms of difficult patients, the worst offenders are probably Transplant, Colorectal, and Trauma, in some order. They each have their reasons. Transplant patients are on immunosuppressants, so even the slightest sniffle gets them a hospital admission and a comprehensive workup. Do that often enough and they start building up a sense of entitlement. Colorectal patients turn crazy because, for various reasons, most of them can't take a normal dump. I mean, who can live like that? And Trauma patients are young guys who get shot and after taking care of them for a few days you can kind of see why. Anyway, I'm generalizing, but all this to say, I've had just about enough of Transplant. I'll be switching to Surgical Oncology in a week, and it'll be back to a relatively normal resident life. Thank goodness.

For some reason I've been thinking about a girl from a few years back. We were both med students at the same hospital, though from different schools and on different rotations. I met her through one of the other students, and had a chance to talk to her a couple of times. She seemed nice, and she happened to mention that she was a Christian, so I figured I might as well try asking her out. She said ok (actually, it was more like, "Uh...ok.") and we had dinner. I thought it went not horribly, but it was hard to play phone tag because of different call schedules or whatever, and I didn't see her again after that. Looking back, I don't know, maybe I should have made more of an effort, maybe I was being my usual relationship-sabotaging self, maybe, maybe, maybe. I hope I've matured a bit since then. I'm (almost) afraid to find out.

Last weekend, Myung and one of his roommates had a house party/poker night. He invited me with the promise that "there will be booze and girls." I drove up after my post-call nap, attempted to play something resembling poker, and met some new people. Alas, I did not get any booze or girls, but I'm trying to make an effort. It's not easy to stop being difficult.