So, this is dumb: I didn’t realize until just the other day that when my professor said, “Progesterone is the hormone of pregnancy,” she really meant it. Pro-gestational hormone. Progesterone. Duh. Somehow I never noticed this obvious meaning until I was reading something about medication abortions that described mifepristone as “antiprogestational.” I hate when I can’t see really clear word meanings.
Last Wednesday, I was feeling pretty lame after clinical. I spent almost all day just observing medication abortions, meaning that I was listening to girls receiving counseling, signing consent forms, and swallowing the first pill (aforementioned mifepristone, previously known as RU-486). I did get to read the entire stack of consent forms to an interpreter for a Japanese-speaking patient, so I got pretty familiar with just what these girls are agreeing to, which was cool. At the end of the day, we had a patient who mentioned almost as an afterthought that she had a lump in her breast. My preceptor wanted me to do the breast exam, and somehow I hesitated just long enough that she just took over. I don’t know, something about there being an actual lump…I just balked.
On Thursday, I had resolved to be more on top of it. And I was! I got to perform a speculum exam to check for IUD strings, AND I got to fit a diaphragm. I was pretty surprised that that came up, but totally pleased since I had just learned how to fit a diaphragm like three days earlier. Thursday was also the day that I got to hear about a provider in the Bronx finding a bag of weed in a woman’s vagina, as well as the day that I taught my preceptor about vajazzling. She was totally entertained. See, even if I’m a little incompetent sometimes, at least I’m kinda funny.
