Shifting dullness… It’s actually a physical finding that pertains to ascites, or to put it more plainly it’s like having abnormally large amounts of fluid in your tummy.  But when you are talking intern-lingo, when we actually say “I am experiencing shifting dullness right now.”, we mean we are in the state of adjusting to a new rotation or environment.  Right now that’s exactly what I am feeling… SHIFTING DULLNESS.  As I probably described in my earlier write-ups, medical clerks, interns and even residents have a schedule of departments to rotate in.  Like right now, I am in my second day in the OB-GYN rotation.  I am going to staying in this rotation for 2 whole months, and then later I am going to shift to Orthopedics.  That’s where we got the term shifting, I guess.  And when I personally come into a new rotation, I become this robot that kinda acts slow, still trying to get into the natural speed of things, trying to remember what I learned last year in clerkship, etcetera etcetera.  If you’re lucky, like me right now, you’ll enter a new department on a post duty status, meaning you don’t go on 24 hour duty on your first day, and you don’t have much work to be done, so you kind of get the chance to ease your way in.  But if you’re UNlucky, you enter the rotation as a duty intern, where you spend your first 24 hours running around still trying to recall, “What labs do I have to request for again?”.  It’s like riding a bike again after years of not getting on one.  You know what to do, and you’ve done it before, it’s just taking the time to seep it’s way into your system again.  Usually it takes a week for shifting dullness to subside, but letting it get to you makes you look lost.  And so now you know exactly how I feel at this particular moment.  Tomorrow is my 3rd day in OB-GYN, and it will be my first duty in the OB Admitting Section, where I get to see people frantically wanting to get in coz their water bags broke.  Please pray that my shifting dullness is cured by tomorrow.  And as extra precaution, I am going to be reviewing from this point forward.

Doctor Beans, signing out.