Back in the days, way back in the days, during morning endorsements we would cower in our seats as the all mighty residents walked around the room brandishing their cat-o-nine tails and wearing knee high leather boots and fishnet stockings. I have just read a bunch of old Catwoman and Birds of Prey comic books featuring Black Canary, so my memory is probably all mixed up, but the fear we felt back in clerkship during morning endorsements in internal medicine was sickening. In one instance while endorsing in front one of our interns suddenly became very pale, hyperventilated, and passed out. The residents would not have any of this, so they all said: ARTE! STAND UP!

Again, fuzzy memory. I have read the pre-New 52 comic book Secret Six by Gail Simone where everyone is biting, sarcastic, and all-around mataray. The residents did not really say arte stand up, but they did ask people to assist her out of the room so she could eat breakfast. The intern never had to endorse ever again during the rotation, so we all tried not eating breakfast before the endorsements. For more, our resident monitor would call us after every endorsement for an extra dose of sermon blather blather blather. After a week we’ve become inured to all of this so we decided what the hellellel. As we were called one by one on why warfarin needed to be overlapped with heparin we decided, in our heads of course: WHO CARES! AHAHAHAHHAHH (insert earnest arguments here such as OF COURSE YOUR PATIENT cares! THEIR LOVED ONES cares! Your FUTURE PRACTICE  cares! Your BLABLABLABALBLAAAAA).

One by one we were called. Smoketh stood up.
Smoketh: Sir, I don’t know.
Then she sat down. NEXT!
Mrs. T stood up.
Mrs. T: Sir, I don’t know.
NEXT!
Me: Sir… I DON’T KNOW!
In our heads: AHAHAHAHAHAAHAH!

Obviously we just wanted the hour to be up, and eventually all three of us went into the specialty so eventually we cared, and we knew all this anti-coagulation stuff inside-out. We cared that the patients could bleed in the brain, etc etc ETC. We eventually took up different further sub-specialties, with Smoketh now more into glomerulus and stuff, Mrs. T into arthritis and stuff, and I into masses and stuff. A few days ago while whining at how horrifically dismal our lives have turned out Smoketh asked me something, a question I think she is planning to ask her students.

Smoketh: Ilang araw nga inooverlap ang warfarin at heparin?
Me: I… don’t know.

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