Bigger or Better: Life outside of Texas

This past week, I attended a medical conference on treatments for gastrointestinal cancers (which include livers and pancreases, by the way). I learned a lot, but the most important thing I learned that day was not to implicitly trust Google Maps. The conference was held at a hotel in Crystal City (geography lesson: the Virginia border near DC), and my husband and I had checked Google Maps the night before and figured out that since it was just as long for me to drive there as to take the Metro, I should take the Metro and thus save on parking. So the morning of the GI oncology meeting, I put in the directions on my phone and rode to the directed stop, The Pentagon (which is also in Virginia across from DC). On exiting the station, I carefully chose to take the stairs that were for non-Pentagon-employees, then held out my phone in front of me like a water-divining-rod and started walking where my phone told me to go. It was tricky, because there aren't a whole lot of sidewa...

I am happy to announce that, although I still don't know exactly what I'm doing in medical oncology, I no longer feel like I'm drowning. Is that positive, or what? Some of my favorite stories: One of my patients reported that when she was first starting chemotherapy infusions, she mentioned to her doctor (Dr W, one of the two that I work with) that she was worried no one was keeping an eye on her mediport site [a mediport is an indwelling IV that can be accessed with a poke of a needle but otherwise is hidden under skin] . He responded, "What do you think the infusion nurses do, throw darts at it?" I was seeing a follow-up patient for a discussion of chemo treatment after surgery when I learned he was still on meds his surgeon had given him 3 weeks ago. I also simultaneously learned he was having bowel movements every 10 minutes. Guess what pills he was still taking? Stool softeners. When I was first orienting to the Georgetown hospital, I met with the r...