Alright. Back up. Let me fill you in. Last weekend, NIB helped me move. Out of the 5 friends who had offered to help me, he was the only one who came thru on his promise. Bonus points for him. I am certain to feed him dinner at some point but first, I have to take care of myself.

This week, I have been a wreck. My week on Benign Gynecology was a crash landing on all accounts. I was super stressed, sleep-deprived, tired [from moving], and hungry [not eating]. Well, I was eating something, but that something was usually hospital crap since I didn't have any groceries of my own. I have not worked out all week [and yet, my body aches] and my meditation sessions have been half-assed, rushed and altogether crappy.

I was completely out of balance.

Nonetheless, things are turning around. Yesterday, Melissa took me to the grocery store, so now I have food. My day today went SO MUCH better, all because I had my own pure vegan organic elitist food to eat.

So, today I discovered the secret of making patients think that you are the world's greatest doctor... in 15 minutes or less. Here's the trick:

At 6:00 am, my resident told me that I had to scrub into a surgery case at 7:30 because they needed an extra hand. At 6:45, I found myself waiting idly for 7:00 rounds to start when, it dawned on me to bust my ass on over to the pre-operative waiting room and meet the patient I would be assisting on. I go over, introduce myself, hang out, ask the pt about what she does, her family, her grand kids, watch the cute anesthesia guy do his shindig with her .. and then after that is all done, tell her that I'm gonna be there with her all the time, in the room, taking care of her post-op and that if she ever needs anything at all or has any questions at all, I am her go-to girl who will take care of her no matter what. Ten minutes of that, and I was busting off to present my other patient at rounds. I skipped out early to then go back to this pre-op patient and help anesthesia walk her in and put her under.

I was in her surgery; it went beautifully. I was busy in Clinic all afternoon and was told to go home, but I felt guilty about doing so without seeing this my surg case post-operatively. So at 6:00 pm I went back up to the floor to check on her and ... dude.. she was so happy, so golden, so incredibly well. When she saw me she beamed and was like, "HEY TEJ!!! I'm so glad you came and talked to me before my surgery. That made me feel SO MUCH better about going in. And it meant so much for me to have you there all the time, and even when I was waking up. You are such a fabulous doctor!!!"

Wow. I mean, I'm not even a doctor. Seriously, all it takes is 15 minutes to give someone the impression that you are there to serve them, that you care about them, and that you will work hard to see that everything is done for them. And all of this is true and genuine, but sometimes Docs are so busy, overloaded, and stressed that they don't take the time to just chill and express this idea to their patients. I hope that in the future, when I am a stressed out chicken-scared resident, I will remember this lesson and be able to put my stuff down for a few minutes to just go and kick it with my patients. And the truth of the matter is that [a] it doesn't take much time and [b] patients feel and recover so much better if you do it. Its all about builing trust in the relationship.

Man, I love my job.