Doctor Barbie

Lisa wanted me to document where "Doctor Barbie" came from for posterity's sake I guess.  Although technically I have no posterity.  :-)

Anyway, I'm going to tell the story as to how I got that nickname.

I was a third-year medical student doing my surgery rotation.  As part of the rotation, we met together once a week, I think, for special problems clinic.

During special problems clinic there would be one or two patients who had, of all things, a special problem that no one could figure out.  Therefore one of the attendings would work up the patient while we all watched and learned.  :-) Then the collaborative minds would discuss and try to figure out what was going on with the patient.

As I recall there were usually about 20 people in the room.  A handful of attendings who were our professors, and a mix of residents and students.

It was sort of set up like a classroom where the attendings and patients were at the front of the room and the residents and students were all sitting in chairs watching.  Because this was surgery rotation we were all in scrubs and white coats.Which I guess can seem pretty intimidating, especially to a child.

One time, the patient was a six-year-old little girl.  She must have had a biomechanical problem because the attending working the patient up was Dr. Shearer, who was the head of the biomechanics department at the school.

Anyway as Dr. Shearer was working up the patient, he asked her to walk down the aisle between all of the students and residents to watch her gait.  Well, needless to say she was a little scared to walk down the aisle between all of the "Doctors".

 So her mother, trying to encourage her to walk down the aisle said to the little girl, "Walk over to that doctor that looks like Barbie".  Of course she meant me :-).  For some reason I happened to be standing up in the back of the room. Presumably to have a better look at the gait.

Then Dr. Shearer said something like, "We just call her Dr. Barbie around here".  Everybody laughed and the little girl did walk towards me so we were able to watch and analyze her gait.

So the name stuck and I was, of course, highly flattered :-).

That's my story and I'm sticking to it :-).

These are the only pictures I have in captivity of me in scrubs and a white coat.

Coincidentally, this was during my surgery rotation as a third-year student at CCPM.

Proudly showing some flowers Mom and Dad sent me for my birthday.  They actually had them sent to the school.  I remember being in a small lecture with Doctor Chang --  one of our podiatric surgery attendings/professors-- during surgery rotation when I received them.:-)

Isn't it weird that I remember the lecture was on TAL (Tendo Achilles Lengthening) Surgery? 

This is me with my boyfriend Ken.  :-) Ha ha ha

This is when I was a resident in Texas.

Getting caught by the self timer.  :-)

Obviously the scrubs were way too big!