Top 10 reasons to hate Halloween

Ok, I'll say it - I don't like Halloween. None of people in my family likes Halloween. Paul Bourgeois from Fort Worth Star Telegram wrote a beautiful Top Ten List to illustrate his dislike of the festival (see below). I believed I was also somewhat traumatized by the childhood experience of my first Halloween. In NYC, where I spent my first Halloween, rotten eggs and other biohazards were the standard "tricks" amongst kids and I once witnessed a poor child being thrown at on the street with those nasty eggs. I mean, what's the flipping point?

The whole idea of "trick-or-treat" is based on the notion of greed and blackmailing - that's pretty unhealthy for kids too, isn't it? And who likes being constantly bothered by scary-looking kids ring your doorbell soliciting free candies?

Top 10 reasons to hate Halloween
1) Trick or Treat? More like extortion!
2) Most shades of orange clash with my eyes
3) Isn't the world scary enough?
4) It's encouraging in our children liberal notions of "something for nothing."
5) Dressing up? Costumes? Makeup? Is it a holiday or a drag show?
6) Costumed dogs
7) Neighborhood dogs barking. (Is it because hoards of strange children are running amok or because these dogs don't have costumes?)
8) Large women dressed as immense pumpkins
9) Don't we already have enough hyperactive fat kids?
10) Jokes like: "What did the skeleton say to the bartender?
... I'll have a beer and a mop!"

Dictations

Dictating discharge summaries is a drag. It's worse if you don't know anything about the patients in the first place. With patients whom I discharged on the first few days of a new rotation, I know so little about them that dictating their discharge summaries is like summarizing a novel without actually having read it. And then there are situations in some services when I don't actually follow the patients every day and I just happen to be the person discharging the patients. Obstetrics is an excellent example because I worked in different place every day and don't actually know any of the patients thoroughly.

In Internal Medicine, interns are so busy during the day that dictating summaries when discharging them is impossible - so it didn't surprise me to see my long list of delinquent dictations in my mailbox the other day. This afternoon I spent 3 hours dictating 6 summaries - what a torture....

Chock Full'o Journals

I was surprised when I was checking my mailbox at the clinic this afternoon. It's filled with journals - 12 to be exact. Where do I get all these subscriptions from? Perhaps some of them are just trial subscriptions. Some of them are subscriptions given from my residency program. Some of them are from my AMA membership.

They are all very useful and informative though; whether I'll have time to digest them all is another story! (They sure make an impressive photograph though as you can see on the left.)

Tokyo, Here I Come!

As I am writing this, I am 35,000 feet above the ground, sitting on my comfortable seat en route to Tokyo. Just a few hours ago, I was still in the hospital, tired post-call, signing off my patients to the on-service interns who were taking over. It is difficult to believe the 4-week medicine rotation has gone by so quickly - and I survived it! We were luckily blessed with 2 light calls in a roll - last night we only admitted 5 new patients and with all the off-service notes to write I was still able to sleep for 2 hours. The students and us 2 interns even watched a DVD (Stoned Age..!!!)together in the lounge! I am glad that all of us in the team were able to bond together well and make this rotation so much more enjoyable.

I think because I was constantly under stress with this medicine rotation, I still don't feel like I am in vacation now. I am sure this will change after meeting my family in Narita! Enjoy my 10 days of fun!