A Typical Sunday

It’s Sunday afternoon and the afternoon sun is filtering through the the closed shades of my bedroom. BG is snuggling up against me and craning to look at my laptop screen. She just woke up from a nap. We move to the living room as she’ll want to start moving around soon and my “office” (i.e. sitting on top of the bed) isn’t the best place to do this. Attracted by the glow of the computer screen, she’ll try and reach out for the laptop and yank it from my lab.

Along with writing this piece in a separate tab I have EPIC I’m catching up on notes from the past week. We’re technically supposed to have them done 24 hours after the encounter but I’ve been slipping. This trend never happened in Medicine. Or at least happened only a handful of times. Now it’s a constant struggle to stay on top of the page of clinic, write effective, accurate documentation, and expect to have a normal life in between. When I’m done with work, it’s all I can do to get BG from daycare, bathe her, and get her ready for bed..

Most of the dermatology attendings, actually all of them, have scribes that will write their notes for the encounter. We as trainees aren’t encouraged to utilize the scribes- for our own continuity clinic write our notes without their help. As we only have six patients in a morning this makes sense.

Now I sit crossed-legged on the living room floor as BG scoots to the closest thing she can put in her mouth. the Destin tube. She can’t open it (yet) so I let her do this as I type and review the patient for the hair loss clinic I assisted with on Friday. Who was the one we were going to recommend more frequent applciation of Derma-smooth to? And which was going to switch to the fluocinolone solution again?

My mind reflects on the week. “What else do you think we can do for her?” I remember my attending asking me about a hair loss patient. “Maybe spironolactone?” I guess. “Not sure about that… the evidence for spironolactone in the context of LPP isn’t very good,” she kindly replies. A “nice try” in the kindest way possible. Better luck next time.

BG coos contentedly to herself and I’m brought back to the present. She’s drooling over her play mat and attempts to open the jar of Vaseline that we have situated near her changing station. I do a double take and realize that she spit up a few minutes ago and it’s all over her face and onesie. She doesn’t mind, but I feel like a bad parent to let my child be in this state. And I feel like a bad parent for not playing with her more and working on the weekend.

My cat, long neglected of attention, jumps on the coffee table and the keyboard. More Mom guilt, now for the fur-kid kind.