Day 3: First Day - Old people taking care of old people

{6.11.12}

I was really nervous about catching the bus in the morning because I didn't trust it to be on time but things ran smoothly, thank God!  It also rained today but it was so bad that I would get soaked just waiting for the bus.  In the morning, I met with Jena, a pharmacist who is in charge of me before my mentor gets back in town.  She's so helpful and I really appreciate her energy and patience with me.  I shadowed from 9am-6pm and saw 4/5 patients with Marvin aka Dr. McBride at the Geriatric Specialty Clinic.  He's a Geriatric Fellow in the UNC-CH hospital system.  I also met Dr Bynum, the "professor," another Geriatric Fellow and a 3rd year med student on rotation.  


The two things the stood out to me today were:
1. The appointments were soo long, about 2-3 hrs each.  From my experience, appointments run 7-13 min.  But since the patients were seeing the physician and the pharmacist, it took longer than usual.  The plus side was that the doctor doesn't feel rushed and everything can be very thorough.

2. I kinda felt "in the way" because a) often times family members would come with the elderly patients and the rooms were so small that I was stuck behind the door, not saying anything, or contributing to the diagnosis or examination, b) in the back room, everyone had something to do - finish a SOAP note, look up patients, whatever - and I was just waiting for them to finish.


And finally, the one patient that stood out to me was 90+ year old pleasant, Polish lady who was diagnosed with dementia with a possible Alzheimer's type.  She would flip back and forth between English and Polish and say "My head is cabbage!" Her daughter, who is in her sixties and used to work for the CIA, really clicked with me.  She sorta gave me a picture of what could be involved with taking care of my mom in the future. No matter how challenging and tedious and taxing, she took care of her mom for all those years that her mom took care of her.  And her mom appreciated it too, "They take good care of me...too good!"