Are you a real person?
Yes, I am a real person, not just a cartoon character.
Are you a real doctor?
Yes.
Can I ask you for medical advice?
Well, I'm a doctor, but not your doctor. So...no. (Sorry!)
What is "The Underwear Drawer" anyway?
Like I mentioned on the "About Me" page, The Underwear Drawer is an online journal I started my second year of medical school as sort of a writing project to keep my mind fresh in the creativity-sucking void that is medical training, and to document some of my stories along the way. Over the years, I expanded it somewhat to include the "Scutmonkey" comics, which is a running series of cartoons about medical training. Some people think the comics are funny. Things I talk about on this site are med school and residency, New York, love and marriage (go together like a horse and carriage), dog ownership, pregnancy and prospective parenthood, books and movies, as well as assorted other miscellany.
I'm new to your journal. Where should I start?
Well, you could start at the beginning, but if slogging through all those entries from past to present is too much for you, here are a few good jumping off points or highlights to get you started:
- Pretty much not that much interesting happened my second year of med school, but it's funny now in retrospect to see how stressed out I got out about some stupid exams.
- I choose my third-year clerkship rotation group, which turned out to be one of the biggest decisions of my med school career, though I didn't know it at the time. Being with a good group of people that you like can make the difference between a great year and a miserable one.
- I start my third year of med school.
- Stories from my third year Psych rotation. There's also a comic about my experience here.
- Then September 11th happens, and I am kind of gone for a while. I come back briefly, only to take an extended hiatus to think about things and figure out the meaning of life.
- Having not figured out the meaning of life, I return with excuses and such, picking up the updates again in the middle of my Neurology rotation.
- Oh, then Joe proposed.
- In the spring of my third year, I go through a life crisis trying to figure out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I even enter a weird fugue state in which I briefly entertained going into Ob-Gyn for about three seconds. Luckily, I return to sanity shortly thereafter.
- I start my Anesthesiology rotation. If I had known this was going to be the field I would end up doing in the end, I probably would have paid more attention.
- I start my Surgery rotation, which is the most miserable month of my third year of med school. I got some good stories out of it, though.
- I finish my third year of med school, and because I am VERY SMART NOW, feel fit to give advice in the form of Michelle's Ten Great Truths About Third Year (or: What I Wish I Had Known Last July). I gotta learn to take some of my own advice sometime.
- I start my Peds Sub-I. This was a good month, because when I started, I couldn't imagine ever being able to handle the life of an intern, but when I finished...I could. Also, this was the first month that I ever took real overnight call. The experience was enough to make me almost quit medicine altogether.
- Big life decisions, in which Joe and I discuss leaving the city for residency. I am the more hesitant of the two of us to leave New York, not only because my family lives here, but because I fear the suburbs. In the end, we decided to apply for residencies just in New York (we couldn't officially "couples match," because Joe was applying in Ophtho, which is an early match through a separate system).
- I do an Adult ID elective because I'm still deciding between Peds and Medicine, but halfway through the month I think, screw it, adults are nasty, I'm going into Peds. And that's how my career angst ended. The first round, anyway.
- That fall, Joe and I move out of university housing downtown to our current apartment. Moving was one of the most stressful experiences of my life, and I never want to do it again, unless it involves a crew of people to pack for me and a heavy sedative/amnestic.
- We try to adopt a puppy from the pound for the first time, and get rejected.
- I go on my first residency interview, and start an ER elective month.
- We try to adopt a puppy from the pound for the second time, and are approved! This puppy, obviously, was Cooper. However, I do have to lie about my job in order to get her, because the people at the pound didn't believe that two people in medicine could possibly be appropriate dog owners. Little did they know how appropriate we would be.
- Joe's parents meet my parents for the first time. Also, I start my senior slump in a big way.
- I get appendicitis. Though this is a relatively straightforward and usually uncomplicated diagnosis, I still managed to get dragged into a huge medical ordeal which somehow stretches out over the course of a month. To this day, I am still bitter about this.
- Match Day! Unfortunately, since I'd been sick for many many weeks and still on Flagyl, I couldn't drink, but I could celebrate in my own teetotaling way.
- Joe and I get hitched, and enjoy a 16-day honeymoon in Southern Italy. This is the longest trip we will probably take until we retire.
- We put on funny outfits and graduate from medical school.
- I start my hospital orientation, and then start my internship. I am a very stupid intern and make lots of mistakes.
- The blackout of 2003 almost catches me in the subway as I head uptown for an evening ER shift.
- We mourn the loss of Dr. Glenda Garvey, an incredible role model that I damn near worshipped. She was just such a cool lady, and such a good doctor.
- I finish my intern year. And then because I am SO DAMN WISE I offer up Ten Tips on How to Be a Successful Intern Without Really Trying (except for the "not really trying" part).
- I decide to switch residencies from Peds to Anesthesia. This change does not stem from the decision that I hate kids, rather that I don't have the skillz or the patience requisite to be a General Pediatrician.
- I decide that we need a new couch, so instead of just buying a new couch like a normal person, I decide that to nominate Joe for Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. We actually advance to the final interview, but don't get picked in the end. Jerks.
- A shocking tragedy for the medical community when we hear that Dr. Steve Miller died in a plane crash en route to a teaching conference. It was a devastating loss, and we continue to miss him every day.
- Joe and I go on vacation to Hawaii and it was really, really fun. Yay Hawaii! But who knew that the pictures and macadamia nuts wouldn't be our biggest souvenir of the trip?
- Yay, we made a fetus! And it has a penis! We decide on the name Cal, because we like the damn name, OK? Yay, we're having a baby, everything is exciting and fun! Except when things are totally stressful and scary, because WHAT THE HELL ARE WE THINKING, having a kid during residency? Also, adding to the fun, there's something about being pregnant that makes people want to give you a lot of unsolicited advice. And that's just annoying.
- Joe and I take a trip with my family to Paris and London. This is probably the last big trip we'll take before the kid is born, so we were under a lot of pressure to live it up.
- We start getting things ready for Cal, including the nursery and purchasing assorted wheeled objects from foreign lands.
- I go to my 10-year high school reunion, which was fun and strange all at the same time. The more things change, the more things stay the same.
- I start my Anesthesia residency. It's scary, but also really fun and exciting. I also realize that I am a total wimp, and that my left arm isn't worth a damn.
- Our son Cal is born. He is perfect. OF COURSE.
- Maternity leave was nifty, but eventually (well, six weeks later) I had to go back to work, and that was mildly traumatic. Also, starting your residency six weeks behind your classmates is a recipe for high stress and bufoonery. However, things get better when I realize I can't please everyone all the time.
- Almost six months into my new residency, but juggling home life and work life still gets me all conflicted.
- One of Cal's eyes looks weird in a Christmas photo and Joe and I freak out. Rookie overreaction, but still, scary.
- We fired our first nanny. A two-resident household with a kid and no nanny is a frightening place indeed. Thank god for grandparents and nice people, because finding a new nanny is hard.
- I spend some time in the SICU, where some of my patients' conditions are upgraded from dead to alive, and then back to dead again.
- Cal turns one year old. That was fast.
Help! I think a mouse died under my floor! I did a Google search on "dead mouse under floor" and your page popped up! What should I do? It stinks in here! Gah!Yeah, we had something similar happen to us, but there wasn't really anything that we could figure out to do about it. In the end, we just tried to keep the windows open, and the smell faded after about two weeks.
Can I use your comics for a presentation/magazine article/t-shirt/fundraiser? It'll be way cool, I swear!
I'm sure it will be. Just please make sure you ask me first before using my work. Believe me, word gets back to me. I have spies everywhere. And anyway, chances are almost 100% that I will give you permission, unless you're somehow using the "Scutmonkey" name to sell crack to kids or something heinous like that.
How come Scutmonkey Issue #1 is sold out? I need a copy! When are you going to issue reprints?
The main reason that I decided not to reprint Scutmonkey Issue #1 and continue to sell the comic online is that my backyard business got a little too successful and it became untenable to run said business from my home while working as a resident. Specifically, I had no time to take care of the orders, I never got a chance to go to Kinko's, and I never got a chance to go to the post office to mail the things off. If there were some way that I could get a third party to take care of the actual printing/order-taking/mailing aspect of selling comics, I would totally be down with issuing reprints, but until then, Scutmonkey Press is closed for business. All the comics are online, though, so you can still read them anyway.
I'm writing an article about medicine/comics/blogs/sarcastic Asian women. Can I interview you?
I would love to help you, please e-mail me and we can try to work something out.
Does anyone you know read your online journal? Does Joe read your online journal? Because you talk about him a lot here. Does he know that? Does he mind?
A good number of people who know me read this page. Which was kind of the point--part of the reason I started "The Underwear Drawer" so that my friends in far-flung places could keep tabs on how I was doing. And of course Joe knows about this page and the fact that I talk about him here, because besides the fact that I tell him, he has been recognized in the street and in the hospital from pictures that I have posted. Just like a movie star, he is. Anyway, he knows that I tell stories about him here and he doesn't mind, but since he's a resident too, I make a special effort not to talk too much about the specifics of his work. As for whether or not he reads this page regularly, I think he kind of feels like there's no point because he hears all the stories first-hand before I post them anyway. But he'll pop on by once in a while.
Why don't you talk more about how you love your patients and love the hospital and how it's all worth it in the end because being a doctor is the most fulfilling thing ever? Are you a bad person?
No, I'm a real person.
How can you tell stories about work? Isn't that a HIPAA violation? Aren't you going to get fired?
Virtually all work stories I tell involving patients has been changed to protect patient privacy. Usually the things I'll change will be things like gender, age, diagnosis, the dates that certain events took place, or any number of other personal or family characteristics. It makes identifying particular patients very difficult. When I tell work stories about patients, I just want you to get the gist of what it's like to work with them--you don't need to know all the details.
What kind of camera do you use?
For most of the pictures that I post, I use a Nikon D70. It is quite a nice "starter" digital SLR, I really recommend it to anyone who is sort of an amateur photography enthusiast. I also have friends who are actual professional photographers (read: they know stuff) and they all feel that it's a good, solid camera without too many crazy features to break the bank. So in short: I don't work for Nikon or anything, but it's a swell camera.
I want to get into med school. Any advice?
My main advice is to make sure you really want to be a doctor. The whole medical training process is no cakewalk, it takes a long time to complete, and if you don't like the kind of work you're doing at the end of it all, you're just going to want to hurl yourself off of something high.
If you could go back in time and decide again whether or not to go into medicine, would you?
Yes. But only because I can't figure out anything else I would be good at. I mean, not that I'm so great at this, but you know what I mean.