my life, my pace

They’re so amusing.  On Monday, I was driving to the lab early for once because of the fact that I had a clinical study to be at by 8:00.  Driving to the lab early is no fun because that’s when everyone else goes to work and it makes for a lot more traffic than I like.  After having finally navigated myself off of the freeway, I ended up in the long line of cars in the right turn lane for the street where the medical center is located.  This line takes forever because the stoplight never stays green long enough and because of the idiots who cut in at the last minute because they think they’re too good to wait in line like the rest of us.  So while I was waiting this morning, I noticed a black Prius stop behind me.  “Cool, a Prius!” I thought to myself (I wasn’t driving my new one yet at the time).  Upon further examination in my rearview mirror, I figured that the driver had to be a med student.  Why?  Well, because he was wearing a white coat.  Of course, he could have been a doctor.  But the dead giveaway was the fact that he was wearing his stethoscope around his neck.  While driving to the hospital?!  I understand that during the course of a busy day of seeing patient after patient, that you just might not have time to put your stethoscope into your white coat pocket (and that it gets bothersome to keep having to pull it out of your white coat pocket).  But while driving to the hospital early in the morning (meaning you’re probably coming from home)?!  That’s just showing off.  Or maybe he figured he just might walk into an emergency where he would immediately need his stethoscope?  Because, of course, med students are always the first to respond during emergencies.  Right.  Maybe it was his first day and I shouldn’t be so harsh.  Whatever the reason, med students sure do the darndest things.

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1. is that white coat growing out of your back?It gets pretty hot around here during the summer.  So hot that I'm almost glad that I'm stuck in my nice air-conditioned lab all day long.  Yet without fail, I always see some med student and/or doctor walking to their car from the hospital (which is a pretty damn long walk in hot weather) with their shirt and tie and white coat on.  And I always wonder how they manage to not suffer heat stroke dressed that way.  And why they don't take their white coats off before walking to their cars.  It really doesn't take that long and besides, it's probably covered in germs and such.  I could even maybe chalk it up to laziness and a I'm-not-spending-another-second-in-this-hospital-even-if-it-means-I'm-hot-as-hell mentality, but then they take off their white coats before they get into their cars.  So either way, they still spend precious seconds of their time removing their white coats.  So why not take them off before leaving the hospital?  There's only one explanation: they want to tell the world that they're hot-doctor (or soon-to-be doctor)-studs.  Which I think is dumb considering that the only people who see them are...I don't know...the people who work at the hospital?  It is a hospital after all, not a bar.  So they can parade around the parking lots all they want in their doctorly attire and no one will be impressed because giggly college sorority girls don't really hang out at hospitals or hospital parking lots.  Really worth risking heat stroke for, don't you...
2. of white coats and stethoscopes…Some medical schools have moved away from the white coat ceremony tradition to embrace a new tradition of presenting students with stethoscopes to symbolize the beginning of their journey to becoming physicians. The white coat separates doctors from patients by creating professional distance, whereas stethoscopes are tools that connect doctors and patients. A white coat is not necessarily essential to being a physician while a stethoscope is. Along the same lines, white coats are so prevalent in the health care industry that it diminishes the significance of the ceremony. Current ad campaigns depict pharmacists as “the other white coat.” What’s next? Physicians are so much more than a white coat. We are healers. We are patient advocates. We are lifetime students of medicine. So I think a stethoscope ceremony is a great idea—give us something that we can use to help us listen to patients’ bodies and not a rather useless coat that doesn’t really set us apart from any number of health care professionals. ...
3. table for 2 please: one seat for me, one for my humongous egoSo I needed to buy a new parking permit this morning.  And I hate buying parking permits.  The parking-permit-nazis always give me a hard time.  You would think that they wouldn't bother considering I'm trying to pay them $200 for a piece of paper.  A very small piece of paper.   I don't know why they insist on picking on me when they're as sweet as apple pie with everyone else.  I thought it was because I look like I'm 12 (okay maybe more like 18 now, but you get the point).  So I even tried putting on my professional clothes complete with my short white coat and glasses once.  Not that it worked.  I guess I needed a long white coat, but I knew that no one would believe that I was a real doctor, so I drew the line at short white coat. Because of my previous not-at-all pleasant experiences with these people, I was not looking forward to starting my Monday morning trying to buy a parking permit from them.  Plus I was running late and if I didn't hurry, I would be left with only my $200 parking permit and no parking space.  So I breezed into the office only to get cut off at the counter by some snooty tall guy who had walked into the office behind me.  And the damn parking-permit-nazi on duty did absolutely nothing about it.  As I waited while this a**hole got his stupid permit, I began wondering who the...

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