If it seems like I’ve done less actual writing and more posting of commercials and online articles…well, it’s just plain true. I finally reached a point in my residency where I’m working so much that I have little time to do most of the fun blogging stuff I like to do, such as product reviews. The fact is that I’m a resident on the Trauma/SICU service at Grant Medical Center in Columbus, Ohio. My days, and often nights, are filled with triaging patients who are brought through the emergency department who’ve been involved in some sort of trauma and taking care of the day-to-day care of critically ill patients in the surgical ICU. If you’ve ever watched Trauma: Life in the E.R. on TLC, then you get a bit of an idea what my life is like right now. Add on the ICU part of it, and it completes the picture.

So, I’ve been working about 66 hours per week over the past month, and will be averaging about 73 hours per week over the next month. With all that time away from home and my hot sauce stash, what’s a hot sauce lover to do?

The answer: bring it with you to work every single day.

I guess I’ve now become famous (or perhaps is it infamous) for making special trips to my backpack to pick out a new bottle of hot sauce for every meal I eat there at the hospital. Lunchtime has now become “hot sauce rounds” for my Trauma team as each person passes around my bottle du jour so they can each try some of it on or in their food. It’s been really interesting to see the reactions of each person to each sauce, whether their palate gets burned (like with CaJohns’ Fatalii Fire) or touched by smoky sweetness (like with Big Dawg Salsa’s Chunkin’ the Deuce) or a more balanced combination of heat and flavor (such as Mad Anthony’s Hot Sauce). Most residents’ coat pockets are filled with medical pocket references, papers, and pens. At any given time, mine might have a bottle or two of hot sauce.

It’s no small reason that my nickname has become “Hot Sauce.” It always gives me a chance to discuss the therapeutic benefits of capsaicin, especially after you consume it liberally like I do. If you’ve ever eaten any hospital cafeteria food, then you understand that using something like hot sauce to make it taste better is nearly a necessity. As for me, it also affords me the opportunity to get more people eating and trying hot & spicy stuff.

While it doesn’t leave a lot of time for doing hot sauce reviews, it’s going to have to do for now. “Doctor Hot Sauce to the ICU, stat!“

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