The Initial Shock

Hello. You're still here? If I had known all three of my readers were still checking this blog, I might have left a few more posts in the interim. Hindsight is always 20/20 I guess. Well, there has been a reason for my absentee-ism. Real life has set in. I have spent the last 8 years postponing any resemblance of a real job by staying in college. As you are aware that came crashing down this past July. In all honesty it hasn't been too bad. However, it leaves me with little time for anything else. I barely have enough time to play with Little Bunny Foo-Foo. There have been days where I leave before she wakes up and come home after she is in bed. Or even worse, leave when she is asleep and come back the next day after she has been up for hours.

To make things worse I am doing my intern year in a program riddled with problems. I literally have a countdown to the day I start Urology. The surgery program is on "double secret probation" for duty hour violations (working their residents more than 80 hours a week) and what I like to call "FEAR-MONGERING" for the way they treat their residents. The big-wigs rule in March if the program will go on REAL probation next year which according to our superiors has a 95% likelihood. Oh the joys of surgery.

But in the last 2 months I've managed to survive surgical oncology and the dreaded trauma service. Trauma was terrible. I was in the OR only once and spent the entire month helping people that could care less that I was helping them. Then to add salt to the wound, 90% of the patients were all doing something they should not have been doing in the first place... like being 9 years old and riding an ATV at midnight, starting a knife fight, losing a knife fight, playing the game "TAG" with real bullets, drinking and driving, drinking and biking, drinking and walking, and my personal favorite...losing a bar fight against someone with a broken glass bottle and asking "do I look like the Joker?" while your best friend giggles under his over-the-legal-limit breath. As you can imagine I was not a happy camper for the last month.

On the plus side, I somehow landed a rotation at one of the cities private hospitals in their ICU. The hours are great, they let you put in all sorts of central lines, and I have time to blog and play with The Foof. I think the hardest part of my new found employment is I get to call the shots from time to time...and frighteningly enough, people listen.

Yesterday was particularly tough. My patient has widespread breast cancer. She is bed bound, septic, intubated, and has likely had a heart attack during her short 3 day stay. Frankly, the family needs to let this poor lady die. But of course, the family is crazy. Asking us to throw everything but the kitchen sink at this lady (the kitchen sink is a metaphor for blood products because the patient happens to be Jehovah's Witness). Don't act like your not impressed. It was very surreal standing in front of a family and recommending they pull the plug. It was very difficult especially since the they weren't listening. For over eight years I had routinely stood behind somebody as they made similar recommendations and nodded quietly. From now on, I have nobody to hide behind since it is my words starting these conversations. Responsibility is hard sometimes. I guess it will take a little more time getting use to those two little initials hanging on to my name.