Liam Hemsworth is not my brother, but don't tell the nurses.

This is obviously not my brother, but, fortunately for me, as far as some of the nurses are concerned , he may as well be.

Alexis is officially under the weather. I know it's obnoxious to refer to oneself in the third person, but my brother did it until he was almost five, and it's a habit that rubbed off on me. Furthermore, I enjoy doing so, perhaps for the obnoxious properties of the practice as much as for any other reason.

On Friday, we had back-to-back-to-back lengthy surgeries. I've only been out of my cast for about nine days, and the duration of remaining upright for the procedures was more than my leg and knee could manage. I was able to remain upright until the final patient was sutured, and even managed to make it out of the O.R. under my power (qa good thing, because had I collapsed on the operating room floor, the cleansing process would have been of Hazmat proportions. 

As it was, I stumbled into a surgical bay before collapsing. The process still involved being lifted onto a gurney, rolled into a procedure room, and more or less hosed down, but it was less extensive than it would have been had it happened on the floor of the surgical suite.

on to of the overuse of my still-recovering fracture and knee injury, I now have an upper respiratory infection, brought on in all likelihood by the outrageous hours I've been putting in on the job. my face feels as though it may explode at any time. The virus has yet to do its real damage, which will happen when it travels down my bronchial tubes and causes me to sound like a tuberculosis patient. Because I had a pneumothorax in the late winter, my lungs will need to be monitored, which means that I will have, joy of joys,  the opportunity to be exposed to even more radiation. If I don't come down with leukemia by the age of thirty it will be only as the result of divine intervention.

When surgeons have colds, they must work through them. They wear masks, wash their hands in an OCD manner, and do all they can to protect patients, but they need to be on the job. When we flunkie med students have colds, if they're bad colds, as this one is (fever, etc.) we are banned from the premises. The risks of our presence do not outweigh the benefits. Fortunately for me, I had eleven bonus days built into this rotation. i can afford to stay home for a few of the, G=Furthermore,i'm far beyond the hours i should have worked thus far. My status in this rotation should not be jeopardized.

I have a reputation for getting on extremely well with the nursing staffs at whatever hospital to which I am assigned. i am friendly to everyone and treat my contemporaries as equals. I am appropriately deferential to the nurses who are significantly older than I. If I must make an order, i do so as mildly and as humbly as possible. Consequently, the nurses have my back. They double-check my orders before the orders go to the chief resident. My orders are usually fine, but one never knows whan an error might be made.Most if not all are technologically superior, at least when it comes to using my iPhone, than i. they come to my aid on a regular basis.

two nurses came over tonight to make chicken soup and banana nut bread for me. i'm not fooling myself into thinking it was entirely for me that they were here. they're young and single, and I have a handsome brother. Still, if they hated me, they wouldn't come here even if my brother were Liam Hemsworth.

This cold, too, will pass, as does everything else, and I will soon return to repairing inguinal hernias and removing ap[endices.