ER: Day Three

Another day in the ER. Only a few notable cases were seen today: a toddler with Fifth's disease, a 15-year-old with HPV (Dr. C wouldn't let me in the room during the pelvic exam, but afterwards he said he ripped her a good one for having unprotected sex at her age), a teenager with a lacerated eyelid, and a 10-year-old with hyperventilation syndrome. When we had some downtime, Martel pimped Delip and me on cardiovascular disease, and that was helpful.

For the teenager, Dr. C got the pediatric plastic surgeon to come down and sew up the eyelid, and let me tell you, that was painful to watch. This kid was trying so hard to be brave (he's still not an adult, after all), but once the needle containing anesthetic hit his eyelid (I don't know about you, but I'd be terrified to have a needle stuck anywhere near my eye), it took me a while to realize that the sounds I was hearing were his moans and cries. His parents were there beside him, holding his hand and telling him it was going to be all right, but it did nothing to calm him down. Only later, once the Versed set in and the plastic surgeon was almost done sewing the lac, did he whisper, "Thank you."

As for the 10-year-old, he started hyperventilating after witnessing his parents arguing, so Dr. C pulled them into a family room to talk to them about getting their lives together for their children. "The most important thing in a relationship is not marriage, it's respect. If you don't respect each other, love dies." Definitely some deep words of wisdom there. The father was all for getting counseling and putting his family back together, but the mother just smiled slightly and said nothing. Bottom line: don't argue in front of your kids.

Dr. C is really an amazing fountain of knowledge (has been in practice for almost 40 years). When the ER was dead, I just sat in the attendings' office listening to him talk to 2 residents about medicine back in his day and medicine the way it is today. In his day, he had 36 hr shifts, then 12 hrs off; no ACGME to regulate the number of hours residents work, and nothing about "balancing life and work." The residents, of course, think medicine today is just as tough as it was then, and it was a good thing to discuss and think about. I think I can learn a lot just from hearing Dr. C talk. Everything had a story. When he learned my name, he said he knew a woman with the same name as me whose baby almost died of a intusseption, but he (Dr. C) was able to save the baby. That baby is now a recent high school grad and he still gets Christmas cards from the family. One of the best rewards of being a doctor, I think =)