Theoretically possibly potentially

So you remember my patient who had the stroke and had to shave her head and then I knit her that hat?

I'm in our 11am teaching conference today, right? And I get this page. And it's the research nurse from Neurology. She's like, hey, do you remember me? I said, of course I do. And then she tells me my patient with the stroke is in clinic for her 60 day follow up (wow, has it really been that long?) and would really love to see me if I could get away.

Of course I could.

She looks fantastic. Amazing. I think she talks better than I do right now. She has no motor deficits. And holy cow, is she rocking out the short hair.

She was so excited to see me. She hugged me twice. Her fiancee was also thrilled to see me. Wow, I can't believe how good she looks. And I can't believe how happy she was to see me again. Or how impressed with me the research nurse was. I....what did I do, really?

You know, I think maybe I'm a good doctor.

And I don't mean that sarcastically. It was sort of an interesting day in that regard...Betsy spent a lot of time undercutting me today. She laughed at me when I suggested on rounds that nebulizers were equal in efficacy to metered dose inhalers (they are. There's data). She acted like I was being ridiculous when I went to give my pneumonia patient a flu shot (it's protocol) and then called me five minutes later to tell me to give her a flu shot. She kept telling me that I needed to present in a problem-based format. I finally said, "um, I thought I was." She pointed out that if I'd really been organized, the attending wouldn't have had to go back over the systems after I was done. Not that it was his first time meeting our seven fairly complicated patients or anything like that. Not that he needed to get a lot of information organized in his own head.

This all, of course, after she called me last night to tell me Mike was off today and so I then had to round on all seven patients. Because she was on call today (they don't really start admitting until noon. There was no way Betsy was going to be holding the call pager. And in her spot in the rotation, there are three residents, not two like every other night, because the Duke resident takes call, along with her and an intern). So she couldn't possibly write any notes.

For Pete's sake.

My shrink and I had an interesting conversation the other day about what it meant for me, symbolically and fundamentally, to be sequestered with an actual bad resident. In the context of my old life where I was just told over and over again that I was a bad resident, when in all likelihood, I really wasn't. I mean, I'm not a different doctor here. And my patients loved me there. I won a teaching award from the medical students. Several patients complained bitterly when I left. But if you'd asked me then....if you'd asked me a lot more recently than then...I would've agreed that I was a worthless human being and a dangerously bad physician. They had me convinced for a brief while that I shouldn't be allowed near actual patients because I was bound to do something harmful. Not that there was evidence of this, but, they had me convinced.

My shrink had a term for that, too. It was, "brainwashed." She's a good psychiatrist.

It's really hard for me to admit this, but I think maybe I am, too.