One down, Seven to go

5/9/08

"You know I hate having my picture taken"

Mark is officially done with his first rotation!! (sounds of rejoicing). He has spent these last six weeks doing his family practice rotation at a clinic called "Doctors On Call" with Dr. Vigil. Mark already knew Dr. Vigil as his surgery teacher at school from two quarters ago. Anyway, how shall I put this.... as a former surgeon, this man has no people skills. (surgeons are typically like that) He was constantly yelling at his staff, which was shocking for Mark, who, as you know, is the sweetest person on earth. Vigil was happy to have someone to unload his paperwork on, though. Mark ended up being quite the asset--he had a heavy workload, ridiculous hours, and no pay. It was a stressful experience for our family.

Not to be too negative--he had some good experiences that he would not have had at another clinic. He did a lot of house calls with Dr. Vigil and also went out to a detention facility a couple of times and saw 30 patients at a time. He also got to go on location for two different movie sets to help do physicals on several actors. His favorite experience was helping Dr. Vigil after hours one time to "harvest" the kidneys of a young woman who had died and was donating her organs. He and two med students were left to "close up", so he got to do his first stitches on a real (although not live) person. They liked him so well at the clinic that they wanted him to come back and work for them after he's done with school, but we'll be back in Utah by then. There was also a nurse who has been working in an ER for 25 years who came to the clinic twice and kept referring people over there, just because she liked Mark so much. She said he is one of the best PA's she has ever met in all the years she's been a nurse.

This week, he's been back at the school for presentations and also a big hairy beast of an exam, which despite his worries, he passed. We had to do a celebration dance when he got home yesterday. He has been catching up on his video games and has now taken Madelyn all the way across town so they can go to an indoor swimming pool with slides and stuff like that . Madelyn was SO EXCITED. She is a little fish and just loves to go swimming.

"Hee, hee! Daddy's taking me SWIMMING!!!"

"Hurry, hurry!"

"I've got my trusty inner tube and I'm ready to go"

On Monday, Mark will start his behavioral medicine rotation with a PhD named Dr. Wells. He is a psychologist and for the most part, Mark will be observing counseling sessions for people trying to overcome addictions. It will be a change of pace from Doctors On Call (that's a good thing), and everyone at the clinic is super nice. I'll let you know how it all went 6 weeks from now....