Men of Dallas

So I thought that when I moved to Dallas there was going to be a whole new world of men open to me and I would meet the man of my dreams instantaneously. Well after going out on the town several times now looking my finest I am not sure this is going to be possible. I was imagining swaggering up to any bar in town and knocking back a cold one with one of many cowboy boot wearin’ tall, dark, handsome fellas all the while talking about what its like to own an oil refinery. The one small problem is that all the men here are gay. Or....they at least look gay. It may be that I’m living in the uber-chic section of Dallas known as Uptown, but all the men here are of the wine smelling, hair gelling, designer clothes wearing variety. I can’t pick out a straight guy from a gay guy to save my life. The thing is, I think all the women here are attracted to that.

Prime example. A few weekends ago I was out at a birthday party when a tall, dark guy wearing a trenchcoat and more product in his hair than was in mine walked up to me, leaned in, and asked “So, what kind of perfume are you wearing?” I gave him bewildered look and replied, “Maybe Baby by Benefit.” To which he nodded “Oh, yeah” as if he was very familiar with the smell. So I said “Did you already know that??” And he replies “Yeah of course. Smells great.” At which point I turn my back to him praying to God that he will just walk away and never speak to me again. I am not sure which I was more turned off by – the fact that he might have actually known what perfume I was wearing, or that he was lying about knowing what perfume I was wearing, or that this was what he actually decided to use as his pickup line. Most alarmingly, after he walked away I turned to my girlfriends from Dallas and said “Yall don’t even know, I attract the biggest weirdos.” To which they replied, “What was wrong with him?? We thought he was totally hot.” Ugh.

Later that night my super shit faced friend Jessica (whose birthday it was) told me that I should totally go bump into the guy in the black shirt sitting at the bar because he was super hot. So I mosey over and toss my hair at this guy and the minute he introduces himself to me I know this was a mistake. Not only is his hairdo so hard from gel I’m certain it wouldn’t move in a tornado, but he also has braces on his bottom teeth. Talk about a turn off. Being the big wussy that I am though, I end up talking to him for next hour about what it’s like to be in commercial flight school at the age of 28 and giving him my digits. So now I am lucky enough to get a daily reminder of the evening everytime my phone rings.

I never thought I would miss the baseball cap wearing, beer drinking men of South Carolina but at least I knew they were interested in me and not my friend Dave!! I’m headed out on the town this evening so I’ll let you know what gems I meet tonight.

Cheers!

A New Day

So I am finally surfacing from my new job to give you an update on my life. Everything is going pretty well, but like any job its frustrating getting the hang of how everything works and where everything is. It doesn’t help that Parkland is an enormous hospital so being my directionally challenged self, its frustrating just trying to find the bathroom. All in all, my new job is MUCH different that my old job. There are, of course, plusses and minuses to this. Everyone in the OB/GYN field has heard the phrase “the Parkland way.” When I was interviewing here for residency I kept hearing the faculty say that everything is done “the Parkland way” and I noticed how protective they are of it. This program is so huge that it works best for everyone to practice the same way so that we can easily change shifts and not too much needs to be discussed. I understand this, but “the Parkland way” is weird and not how obstetrics and gynecology is practiced anywhere else in the world. It’s kinda like - this is the way we do it here and it has been done like this for years and years and we are not sure why we do it but you better do it too. Soo....to anyone reading this at my old program all I have to say is the grass is always greener. So far, this is what I have found to be the pros and cons:

PROS:

1. The hours. This is a big one. The hours are way better at Parkland. There are so many residents that we all work in shifts and the longest shift I have worked and probably will ever work is 17 hours. This is crazy seeing as how I used to pull 24-30 hour shifts every weekend at home. Oh, and if my shift is over at 7:00, I am out the door at 7:01. At home if your day was over at 5:00, that actually meant you would leave anywhere between the hours of 5:00 and 8:00.

2. No clinic. Well, very minimal clinic. We have approximately 4 half days a month in contract to the 4 half days a week at home. And along this same line, another pro is no Logician. Logician is the computer program we used to document notes from clinic. Much to my dismay, we could get Logician on our computers at home so we were expected to see all our patients and then go home and spend an hour or two writing our notes. At Parkland, you just handwrite a quick note in the chart after you see the patient so you never have to take your work home. Thank God.

3. No attendings (these are the old docs who are scary and yell at us). Seriously, I never see them. This pro is kind of a tricky one because it is sort of a plus and minus. At home the attendings were lurking around all the time. We had to check out every patient to an attending and they always knew when we did something wrong and were ready to rip us a new one. Here, they are never around which means that our 3rd and 4th year residents act like the attendings. Which basically means I am scared of all the 3rd and 4th year residents.

4. No dictation. Need I say more??

That’s a pretty good list. But of course with all those pros comes some cons.

CONS:

1. More paperwork. I actually thought it would be impossible to have more paperwork than we had at home, but it is. To discharge a patient I have to fill out at least 10 forms. Just to order a pregnancy test I have to fill out and put stickers on 3 forms. It's ridiculous.

2. The nurses. Well, not that they aren’t nice people because they are, but they don’t help you do anything. They don’t even go in the room with me for an exam so I have to get out all my supplies myself and fill out all the paperwork myself. Which means my patient is sitting spread eagle with a metal thingy in her crotch for four times as long while I bumble around getting all my crap together.

3. Delivery in the operating room. At Parkland we do it old school style where the lady labors in one room and then when the baby’s head starts coming out I have to push her bed out of the labor room and wheel her back into the operating room and get her to scootch herself over to another bed all the while with a baby’s head hanging between her legs. Oh, and when I say “I wheel her back” I literally mean I have to do it, referring back to con #2. No jobs for medical techs here.

4. Vertical skin incisions for c-sections. What?? Ladies, how pissed would you be if you had a big ass scar from your belly button to your whoo-ha?? Especially when all your other girlfriends are looking fine in their bikinis on the beach.

5. And you guessed it.....the number 1 con of all. MEXICANS. I’ve never seen so many in my life. Not even when I was drunk in Mexico when I was 14. And if I don’t learn to speak Spanish pretty darn fast, I’m pretty sure I’m gonna get the ax.

So there they are, my preliminary likes and dislikes. I’m not sure which list weighs heavier, even though the con list is a little longer. The pro list has some pretty important points on it.

Cheers!