regina papilloma

Things seem to come in streaks at work. At the beginning of the month, I was crowned the wart queen, because I was seeing so many cases of genital warts. I became quite adept at burning them off with a toothpick or the wooden end of a sterile swab soaked in TCA. I had a regular lineup of repeat customers coming back for weekly treatments. One of the nurses told me one morning "we had a patient come in last night with warts -- and I thought of you." How sweet. I wondered how I could abdicate my reign and pass the crown on to someone else.

Then, suddenly, the warts dried up, so to speak. It was herpes week. People kept coming in with the chief complaint "I have bumps down there" but they needed acyclovir, not TCA. We sent viral cultures to the lab and wrote lots of scripts, and told people to pour warm water over their bottoms when they peed, so it wouldn't sting so much.

I guess we shouldn't have been talking about stinging while peeing, because this past week was UTI week. I'm starting to hate Bactrim because it doesn't ever seem to work. It's the first thing we prescribe (as long as you're not allergic to sulfa drugs) while we send a urine sample for culture and sensitivity. Two days later, I call you to see how you're feeling (I never seem to have my C&S back by the time I'm supposed to check back with you) and you're still miserable. So I call in a script and send you to the drugstore for macrobid.

I'll have to keep your chart in my bin for at least a week while I wait for labs, call you, and call you again to see if the second antibiotic worked. I'm going to call you rather than wait for you to call me if things get worse. Because you probably won't call me and I'll worry that you're in the hospital with pyelonephritis. Probably because the first girl I saw with a UTI said in an offhand fashion "oh, last July I was in the ICU with a kidney infection. And I've been having back pain..." Her C&S came back resistant to about 2/3 of the antibiotics we could have given her. And I chased her for a week trying to make sure she got the right meds and didn't end up back in the hospital. She wouldn't call to check in, she wouldn't come back for follow-up, she gave me a few more grey hairs.

It was a lovely warm sunny week and I didn't get to enjoy it because I work inside, in rooms with the blinds drawn. Twenty minutes before I got off work on Friday, a cold front came through and it started raining. Grey and 40s today. People were out burning brush all week. Plumes of smoke and campfire scent dotted my drive to and from work