In medicine, people generally expect doctors to be cool and calm, able to withstand stress under pressure. Sadly, I don't fit that mold. I crack pretty easily under a lot of pressure, and I know it. When I first started residency, I set a rule to myself to never lose control of my emotions at work, no matter how bad things got. I already broken that rule twice during my intern year. The first was during a MICU shift when I had to juggle 7 patients while my resident was post call. The second was during a floor month when I had to juggle 14 patients (including 2 discharges) while post-call on a Saturday with no resident to help me get out before 1 pm. The first time, a MICU nurse was there to reassure me that it was still early in the year and I was doing a good job; the second time, a resident heard me out while I ranted. The insight I got from this is that I'm more likely to lose my temper when all hell breaks loose while running a service alone.
My last Friday on the heme-onc service was no exception. First we had a new admission that had been wrongly assigned to my team and I must have wasted an hour of my time calling the general medicine services to see if they would take this patient (fortunately one attending said yes) and then arranging his transfer instead of caring for my own patients. Then, after my intern went home (she was post-call) we had 5 discharges and 6 admissions in a single day (fortunately I didn't have to do the admissions but I had a black weekend ahead of me so I had to learn all about them). Then a patient who was supposed to be discharged had a clotted J-tube that neither I nor surgery could fix, so our only option was to call IR. The problem: it was 4:40 pm when I called and IR closes at 5:00 pm. And it's a Friday. Needless to say the IR attending (who's an ass to begin with) totally ripped me a new one, asking me why I waited so long to call and if I was just "sitting on this all day." Hardly! The last thing I wanted to do was to call IR to fix a J-tube; that's why I tried every other possible option! At any rate, the stress of caring for 14 patients, worrying about my patient in the ICU, trying to do well on this rotation and now getting yelled at for something beyond my control was too much, so I just broke down and cried.
Fortunately I was in the med room (complete with a computer so I could update my patient list and signout from there) when this happened, so the attendings didn't witness my breakdown. My 4th year student, the other heme-onc resident, a couple of nurses, and later my fellow tried to comfort me, saying that today was a bad day, I was doing a good job, there was only so much I could do, etc., but the waterworks just wouldn't stop. There were times where I thought I'd finally composed myself, but then something else would set me off and I'd be back to square one. One of the nurses even brought in a box of Kleenex so I'd have something to blow my nose on. In the midst of all this, IR called and said they'd take my patient if he came down to the department ASAP, so my med student ran outside, got a wheelchair, and personally took my patient down to IR. I felt horrible that he had to witness his resident falling apart the way he did, but I think he understood how stressed I was. When he came back to the med room, he offered to come in to work tomorrow morning to help me get my work done faster. That was a kind gesture. Finally I regained enough composure to leave the med room and finish up my work. If my attending noticed that my eyes were red, he was kind enough not to say anything about it.
The following Saturday my 4th year came in as promised, and the attending covering the service that day commended him for coming in on his day off to help out. "You've got a fine young student here," one of the patients told the attending, to which she (and I) agreed. I was able to finish most of my work on time with his help and let him go before 1 pm, telling him that today's shift would count as a call (4th years have to take call with residents). The rest of the black weekend went smoother than I thought, and I was so relieved to be done.
But then again I'm a sucker for punishment and went straight from the heme-onc service to a month of heme-onc consults, which is run by the same attendings whose service I just left. In a way it was good because now the attendings can see how I work without the pressure of trying to run a full service, and the consult service is way more relaxing. I still saw my old team from time to time and got the new resident oriented into how the team runs. I was also relieved to learn that my patient who got sent to the ICU was doing better; she was off pressors and recently extubataed, though now she has an EF of 10-15%. Whether this was due to the chemo or infection I can't be sure, but I'm grateful that she's turned the tables...for now.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Deadly Mistakes
This morning I got to work to find out that one of my patients, a young woman in her 30s who was neutropenic after getting chemotherapy, had been sent to the unit. She had spiked a fever overnight and become hypotensive, which given her neutropenic state wasn't too surprising. She'd first shown signs of infection four days ago, and we'd put her on vanco, Zosyn, and flagyl to treat her empirically. Or at least, I thought we did. Her blood had grown zosyn-sensitive Klebsiella, and I remember thinking, "Oh good, at least she has coverage for it." Then when I spoke to the night float, he said, "You know, she only got a one-time dose of vanco and flagyl four days ago, and hasn't had any since. The only antibiotic she'd been getting was Zosyn."
To say that I was stunned would be an understatement. I can't even describe what I felt when I heard him say that: it was a combination of shock, horror, worry, and fear. Definitely fear. We put our patients' medication lists on a Word document and copy them onto the progress notes everyday, and even though I put my med student and intern in charge of updating those lists, sometimes things aren't done. When our attending had told us to add broad spectrum Abx to this patient's med list, we added it onto the Word document without checking the EMR to see if it was actually being ordered. And all this time, we believed the patient was getting broad spectrum antibiotics when she wasn't. And now she's in the MICU on 2 pressors, intubated and septic, unlikely to survive the remainder of the week unless she really recovers.
It's hard to say who was at fault. The person who put in the abx orders as a one-time stat dose instead of a standing dose had only been at this hospital for 2 months and probably didn't know better. The medical student who's supposed to update the medication list each day never saw that the antibiotics had fallen out of the computer. And I, the resident, have been so busy doing admissions, trying to oversee a capped service, and keeping things in order that I never double-checked the computer to make sure she was getting her abx. Even the patient did not help matters by refusing blood cultures over the weekend (they drew stat cultures in the MICU and it grew out gram negatives within 8 hrs) I felt sick all morning and couldn't help but feel guilty over everything that happened. More so because I am strongly considering applying for a heme-onc fellowship and plan to ask my attendings for rec letters. Would they even look at my application after what happened? Fortunately the attending never once blamed any particular person for this, but I knew very well that that if something like this had happened to a patient on the heart failure service, the heart failure attendings would have done everything in their power to get me kicked out of the residency program. After all, this was a matter of life and death.
I went to see the patient later in the unit; by then she was intubated and had a central line and art line. All she wanted these past few days was to get better and go home to be with her kids. And now she might not survive. *sigh* Hoping she gets through this.
To say that I was stunned would be an understatement. I can't even describe what I felt when I heard him say that: it was a combination of shock, horror, worry, and fear. Definitely fear. We put our patients' medication lists on a Word document and copy them onto the progress notes everyday, and even though I put my med student and intern in charge of updating those lists, sometimes things aren't done. When our attending had told us to add broad spectrum Abx to this patient's med list, we added it onto the Word document without checking the EMR to see if it was actually being ordered. And all this time, we believed the patient was getting broad spectrum antibiotics when she wasn't. And now she's in the MICU on 2 pressors, intubated and septic, unlikely to survive the remainder of the week unless she really recovers.
It's hard to say who was at fault. The person who put in the abx orders as a one-time stat dose instead of a standing dose had only been at this hospital for 2 months and probably didn't know better. The medical student who's supposed to update the medication list each day never saw that the antibiotics had fallen out of the computer. And I, the resident, have been so busy doing admissions, trying to oversee a capped service, and keeping things in order that I never double-checked the computer to make sure she was getting her abx. Even the patient did not help matters by refusing blood cultures over the weekend (they drew stat cultures in the MICU and it grew out gram negatives within 8 hrs) I felt sick all morning and couldn't help but feel guilty over everything that happened. More so because I am strongly considering applying for a heme-onc fellowship and plan to ask my attendings for rec letters. Would they even look at my application after what happened? Fortunately the attending never once blamed any particular person for this, but I knew very well that that if something like this had happened to a patient on the heart failure service, the heart failure attendings would have done everything in their power to get me kicked out of the residency program. After all, this was a matter of life and death.
I went to see the patient later in the unit; by then she was intubated and had a central line and art line. All she wanted these past few days was to get better and go home to be with her kids. And now she might not survive. *sigh* Hoping she gets through this.
Friday, August 13, 2010
Friday the 13th
"You guys do know today's Friday the 13th, right?" These words were said by my attending during rounds today, but I didn't even know that it was Friday the 13th until he brought it up. And even if it was Friday the 13th, I've never been superstitious and I didn't expect this day to be worse than any other day. I was wrong.
I started the morning with 15 patients on my service (the other heme-onc team had 16 so our teams were both beyond capped), and starting at noon I had to run the whole service alone. My intern had clinic, and my sub-I was attending his brother's wedding on the West Coast. I knew my afternoon would be hellish since I had to be a "resi-tern," but between 11 am and 2 pm everything went to hell. One of my patients who had been admitted with anasarca and was responding well to Lasix and albumin suddenly had grossly bloody stools and a drop in Hgb from 8.4 to 7.2. We transfused her 2 units, but when she had a second equally bloody BM, we knew that was trouble. The poor woman had been doing so well and was crying when she learned we had to put in an NG tube. At the same time, I had a patient whom transport was supposed to pick up at 1:00 pm exactly, and I had to scramble to do his discharge paperwork while the GI fellow was at my heels telling me to throw in an NG tube and start Nexium and octreotide on my GI bleeder. Fortunately my fellow could see I was swamped and put in the NG tube (which yielded bright red blood), and she helped transfer that patient to the unit while I ran around like a madwoman filling out scripts, admitting two direct admissions, answering calls from nurses, etc. There were a few times where I felt like crying, but fortunately that didn't happen. Then a patient on the other team had an unwitnessed fall, the same reason for which she was admitted, and we had to send her down for a head CT. *sigh* Is it Friday 13th, or just a bad day? Who knows. At any rate I didn't leave work until 9 pm (I was on call until 8 pm).
What a day....
I started the morning with 15 patients on my service (the other heme-onc team had 16 so our teams were both beyond capped), and starting at noon I had to run the whole service alone. My intern had clinic, and my sub-I was attending his brother's wedding on the West Coast. I knew my afternoon would be hellish since I had to be a "resi-tern," but between 11 am and 2 pm everything went to hell. One of my patients who had been admitted with anasarca and was responding well to Lasix and albumin suddenly had grossly bloody stools and a drop in Hgb from 8.4 to 7.2. We transfused her 2 units, but when she had a second equally bloody BM, we knew that was trouble. The poor woman had been doing so well and was crying when she learned we had to put in an NG tube. At the same time, I had a patient whom transport was supposed to pick up at 1:00 pm exactly, and I had to scramble to do his discharge paperwork while the GI fellow was at my heels telling me to throw in an NG tube and start Nexium and octreotide on my GI bleeder. Fortunately my fellow could see I was swamped and put in the NG tube (which yielded bright red blood), and she helped transfer that patient to the unit while I ran around like a madwoman filling out scripts, admitting two direct admissions, answering calls from nurses, etc. There were a few times where I felt like crying, but fortunately that didn't happen. Then a patient on the other team had an unwitnessed fall, the same reason for which she was admitted, and we had to send her down for a head CT. *sigh* Is it Friday 13th, or just a bad day? Who knows. At any rate I didn't leave work until 9 pm (I was on call until 8 pm).
What a day....
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Two Days Later...
After my hellish non-call day, I wasn't sure what to expect on the day that I was actually on call, but this call was probably the best one yet. My poor intern stayed at the hospital until 5-6 pm yesterday discharging patients and trying to hold the team together; it was his first weekend shift and he'd never written all 14 notes at once before. I was told that he seemed stressed and a bit overwhelmed (not unlike how I was on Friday), so sometime this week I'll have to find time to sit him down and go over things with him. Fortunately for me I only had 11 patients to see this morning, and between seeing patients and rounding with both the fellow and the attending, I managed to get all my work done by 1 pm. Not too shabby.
I emailed the triage resident and we were able to clear the air about what happened on Friday (she got 6 admissions at once and thought we were almost done with the admission so she wanted me to oversee it without realizing that my intern hadn't even started on it). I wonder if she told today's triage resident (who was my resident back in February) to cut me some slack today, because I didn't get called for a single admission all day. At most I was asked to oversee another intern's admission, and when I found out she wasn't able to do it b/c she was sending a patient to the unit, I took it out of her hands and did the H&P myself to help her out. We went over it together afterwards since the patient was going to her team, but overall I had enough time today to dictate about 6-7 patients. And I got to leave on time. If only all calls were like this =)
I emailed the triage resident and we were able to clear the air about what happened on Friday (she got 6 admissions at once and thought we were almost done with the admission so she wanted me to oversee it without realizing that my intern hadn't even started on it). I wonder if she told today's triage resident (who was my resident back in February) to cut me some slack today, because I didn't get called for a single admission all day. At most I was asked to oversee another intern's admission, and when I found out she wasn't able to do it b/c she was sending a patient to the unit, I took it out of her hands and did the H&P myself to help her out. We went over it together afterwards since the patient was going to her team, but overall I had enough time today to dictate about 6-7 patients. And I got to leave on time. If only all calls were like this =)
Friday, July 30, 2010
Overwhelmed....
As glad as I am not to be an intern anymore, being a resident has its own share of trouble. I'm now working on a heme-onc floor service, a rotation which I'd requested because I'm interested in heme-onc and the attendings on this service are also the program directors for the fellowship program here. If I did well on this rotation, then the attendings would take notice of me and possibly write me a letter of recommendation when time came for me to apply for fellowships. I had just completed a heme-onc floor month at the other hospital, so I thought the transition from one hospital service to another wouldn't be difficult.
Wrong.
This service is notorious for always being capped and being extremely busy, but I had no idea how busy it would be until now. There are new patients being admitted to our service almost every day for chemotherapy, neutropenic fever, etc., so I have to do admissions on days even when I'm not on call. There was one day where we got 3 new admissions before noon, and I already had 13 patients on my service. But the 14-patient cap doesn't really exist for this service. The chemo patients are pretty easy; they come in for chemo for 1-2 days and then leave (it just means more dictations for me to do later on; by the end of this rotation I'll be a pro at dictating). But that also means our census is always fluctuating, and it's hard for me to know everything that's going on with all 14+ patients. Which is bad, because as the resident I'm supposed to know what's going on at all times. Instead it's my sub-I who knows the patients best since she's been on service for 4 weeks and knows more about them than my own intern (who's similarly overwhelmed since this is his first floor month). And now she'll be leaving too, and I'll have a brand new sub-I and MS3 next Monday to train.
Today was especially bad because my intern had clinic this afternoon at the "Bing," the private hospital located 13 miles away (a 1 hr commute during the day), so I was intern-less for the afternoon. At this time I was carrying a grand total of 17 patients; 2 new ones got admitted for chemo in the morning. There would also be 4 patients leaving after completing their chemo, so my med students and I were doing discharge paperwork like crazy. On top of that, one of my patients needed a MICU eval b/c he fell out of bed and was found to have a head bleed (MICU ended up rejecting him b/c of his DNR/DNI status), another one got a last minute ERCP for abdominal pain, etc. There was so much to follow up on I was running around like crazy. My intern, despite having clinic this afternoon, was also on call until 8 pm tonight, so I did 1 admission and 1 accept note for him this afternoon. I felt bad about leaving my med students alone when I had to run to the ER for the admission, but fortunately they did fine. The other heme-onc resident helped out by supervising my MS3 in her first successful ABG, and I rewarded my med students by sending them home at 5 pm (which is "early" for this service; this entire I week I never left work earlier than 5:45 pm)
Then there were 3 direct admissions to my team starting at 5:30 pm, and all of them for nausea/vomiting/sick symptoms. The triage resident told me to do one of them, but by then my intern had returned so I gave the admission to him. Ideally, I was allowed to leave as soon as my intern returned to complete his call, but I stuck around the hospital to help him with floor stuff while he worked on his admission. The problem: he started doing floor stuff instead, and I tried to get him to focus on the admission in order to get him out at 8 pm. By this time it was 7 pm and after the day from hell I was anxious to leave. The triage resident had told me that she would supervise his admission, but around 7:10 pm another resident (who's known to be extremely two-faced) came by and told me, "By the way, triage wants you to supervise your intern's admission."
I was stunned. Never mind that I wasn't even on call today, why were the residents making me stay until 8 pm to supervise my intern's admission? Was it because the patient was going to my team? I wasn't even supposed to BE at the hospital right now! I'd only stayed so that my team would have continuity of care until my intern returned, and now this?! Were they doing this just for the sake of convenience? I did not believe that the triage resident had wanted this; she had apologized for making me stay late until my intern returned. Rather, I think the other resident said this so that he wouldn't have to supervise my intern himself. A part of me wanted to call the triage resident and ask if she really wanted me to stay late to supervise the admission, but then what would that have done to my intern? He was sitting right beside me when I was told to supervise him; if I bailed on him now, then he'd probably think all I cared about was going home rather than help him out. So I didn't argue and agreed to supervise the admission. Even when another resident stopped by and asked if I needed help, I said I'd take care of it since, after all, the patient was going to my team and I needed to know what was going on. I think at the end of the day my intern could tell I was stressed to the max (I was "sighing" a lot more than usual), but he still couldn't sense my urgency to get out on time. We didn't wrap things up until 8:30 pm, at which point I couldn't leave the hospital fast enough. I didn't let myself break until I got home.
I never expected to be on call with my intern like this, and I have my own call in 2 days. That is Q2 call. I should consider myself lucky that residents don't have to do overnight calls except in the units, but I am still extremely stressed, angry and frustrated. I feel like I'm not a good resident since I don't know my patients as well as I should (even consulting residents knew to ask my sub-I for information instead of me), my medicine knowledge is lacking, and I've yet to do well by the attendings. At this rate I don't think I'm in any position to apply for a fellowship this year. If I even want to do a fellowship anymore. I also want to email my chiefs about this, but I don't want to come off as being lazy or weak. *sigh* I don't know what to do anymore.
Just hoping things get better next week.
Wrong.
This service is notorious for always being capped and being extremely busy, but I had no idea how busy it would be until now. There are new patients being admitted to our service almost every day for chemotherapy, neutropenic fever, etc., so I have to do admissions on days even when I'm not on call. There was one day where we got 3 new admissions before noon, and I already had 13 patients on my service. But the 14-patient cap doesn't really exist for this service. The chemo patients are pretty easy; they come in for chemo for 1-2 days and then leave (it just means more dictations for me to do later on; by the end of this rotation I'll be a pro at dictating). But that also means our census is always fluctuating, and it's hard for me to know everything that's going on with all 14+ patients. Which is bad, because as the resident I'm supposed to know what's going on at all times. Instead it's my sub-I who knows the patients best since she's been on service for 4 weeks and knows more about them than my own intern (who's similarly overwhelmed since this is his first floor month). And now she'll be leaving too, and I'll have a brand new sub-I and MS3 next Monday to train.
Today was especially bad because my intern had clinic this afternoon at the "Bing," the private hospital located 13 miles away (a 1 hr commute during the day), so I was intern-less for the afternoon. At this time I was carrying a grand total of 17 patients; 2 new ones got admitted for chemo in the morning. There would also be 4 patients leaving after completing their chemo, so my med students and I were doing discharge paperwork like crazy. On top of that, one of my patients needed a MICU eval b/c he fell out of bed and was found to have a head bleed (MICU ended up rejecting him b/c of his DNR/DNI status), another one got a last minute ERCP for abdominal pain, etc. There was so much to follow up on I was running around like crazy. My intern, despite having clinic this afternoon, was also on call until 8 pm tonight, so I did 1 admission and 1 accept note for him this afternoon. I felt bad about leaving my med students alone when I had to run to the ER for the admission, but fortunately they did fine. The other heme-onc resident helped out by supervising my MS3 in her first successful ABG, and I rewarded my med students by sending them home at 5 pm (which is "early" for this service; this entire I week I never left work earlier than 5:45 pm)
Then there were 3 direct admissions to my team starting at 5:30 pm, and all of them for nausea/vomiting/sick symptoms. The triage resident told me to do one of them, but by then my intern had returned so I gave the admission to him. Ideally, I was allowed to leave as soon as my intern returned to complete his call, but I stuck around the hospital to help him with floor stuff while he worked on his admission. The problem: he started doing floor stuff instead, and I tried to get him to focus on the admission in order to get him out at 8 pm. By this time it was 7 pm and after the day from hell I was anxious to leave. The triage resident had told me that she would supervise his admission, but around 7:10 pm another resident (who's known to be extremely two-faced) came by and told me, "By the way, triage wants you to supervise your intern's admission."
I was stunned. Never mind that I wasn't even on call today, why were the residents making me stay until 8 pm to supervise my intern's admission? Was it because the patient was going to my team? I wasn't even supposed to BE at the hospital right now! I'd only stayed so that my team would have continuity of care until my intern returned, and now this?! Were they doing this just for the sake of convenience? I did not believe that the triage resident had wanted this; she had apologized for making me stay late until my intern returned. Rather, I think the other resident said this so that he wouldn't have to supervise my intern himself. A part of me wanted to call the triage resident and ask if she really wanted me to stay late to supervise the admission, but then what would that have done to my intern? He was sitting right beside me when I was told to supervise him; if I bailed on him now, then he'd probably think all I cared about was going home rather than help him out. So I didn't argue and agreed to supervise the admission. Even when another resident stopped by and asked if I needed help, I said I'd take care of it since, after all, the patient was going to my team and I needed to know what was going on. I think at the end of the day my intern could tell I was stressed to the max (I was "sighing" a lot more than usual), but he still couldn't sense my urgency to get out on time. We didn't wrap things up until 8:30 pm, at which point I couldn't leave the hospital fast enough. I didn't let myself break until I got home.
I never expected to be on call with my intern like this, and I have my own call in 2 days. That is Q2 call. I should consider myself lucky that residents don't have to do overnight calls except in the units, but I am still extremely stressed, angry and frustrated. I feel like I'm not a good resident since I don't know my patients as well as I should (even consulting residents knew to ask my sub-I for information instead of me), my medicine knowledge is lacking, and I've yet to do well by the attendings. At this rate I don't think I'm in any position to apply for a fellowship this year. If I even want to do a fellowship anymore. I also want to email my chiefs about this, but I don't want to come off as being lazy or weak. *sigh* I don't know what to do anymore.
Just hoping things get better next week.
Monday, July 5, 2010
Being a Resident
I've been a PGY-2 for about 5 days now, and I must say it's been quite a transition from being an intern. Sure, I have fewer notes to write, but there's a greater sense of responsibility that comes with being a resident. My intern is very helpful and hardworking (which is good; I don't know if I can deal well with lazy interns), but I still have to look over his shoulder to make sure things get done right. Yesterday he was on call overnight (and covering night float), so I expected him to be a zombie. When I ran into one of the Drexel attendings, however, she confided that she didn't know what to think of this year's batch of interns. One intern ordered methadone for a patient's pain (when she was already on dilaudid and not a recovering addict). Another called the attending at 3 am asking what dose of kayexalate to give a patient for a K of 6.2. My own intern, to my dismay, told her over the phone that he was "too busy" to take care of something she wanted done as soon as possible. And while I believe that he was busy since he was getting signout from other teams at the time, that's just the wrong thing to say to an attending. I still remember my fellow MSIII's response at Methodist when the attending asked her why she didn't go to the pathology lab to look at a patient's biopsy results as instructed: "I guess I didn't feel motivated to do it." *facepalm* When I told another classmate about my intern's faux pas response, he asked me, "Were we that bad when we were interns?" I'd like to think no, but who knows. -__-
The current batch of interns here at the "Bing" (the private hospital where we rotate through 1-3 months of the year) really do seem overwhelmed. I feel pretty fortunate that I'm now a resident on a service that I did just 3 months ago as an intern; the attendings still remember me and I know how things run. That's not to say I haven't made mistakes; my intern mistakenly told me that a patient's bone marrow biopsy wasn't back and instead of checking the results myself, I took his word for it. Later I found myself in trouble when the attending clearly pointed out that the biopsy results had been noted in the chart. "How long have you been on service?" she'd asked. That was a real FML moment, but makes me more determined to be careful when chartchecking. Clearly it's too soon to believe everything that comes out of the intern's mouth for now; I just hope it gets better by the time med students start. Then I'll have my hands full.
The current batch of interns here at the "Bing" (the private hospital where we rotate through 1-3 months of the year) really do seem overwhelmed. I feel pretty fortunate that I'm now a resident on a service that I did just 3 months ago as an intern; the attendings still remember me and I know how things run. That's not to say I haven't made mistakes; my intern mistakenly told me that a patient's bone marrow biopsy wasn't back and instead of checking the results myself, I took his word for it. Later I found myself in trouble when the attending clearly pointed out that the biopsy results had been noted in the chart. "How long have you been on service?" she'd asked. That was a real FML moment, but makes me more determined to be careful when chartchecking. Clearly it's too soon to believe everything that comes out of the intern's mouth for now; I just hope it gets better by the time med students start. Then I'll have my hands full.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
The End of Intern Year
Today was the very last day of my intern year, and honestly, it couldn't have come fast enough. After 2 weeks of night float followed by 4 weeks of CCU, I was drained and in desperate need of a break. My license expires tomorrow and won't start again until July 1st, so until then I have a glorious 1-week break which I plan to spend at home with family and friends.
The newest batch of interns arrived this morning to shadow us for a couple of hours to see what their jobs tomorrow would be like. They showed up in their brand new white coats and notepads in hand ready to jot down new information. We were pretty amused to find that of the four new CCU interns, three were named David; we joked that they'd have to be called by their last names to tell them apart. One of the Davids would be taking my spot tomorrow, so I told him a little about each patient and what was going on. The fellows, too, welcomed the interns, and one of them immediately sat down and started teaching them about Swan Ganz catheters, right heart caths, and other things essential to the CCU. It was surprising because he'd never taught my fellow interns and me any of this (we had to figure it out on our own), but I guess with these guys being new to medicine and the CCU they had to learn quickly what was important. Our attendings, too, were interested in meeting the new interns "fresh out of medical school;" when the heart failure attending came by and didn't see the interns anywhere (b/c they were in another patient's room), he wondered where they'd gone.
Unfortunately for the new interns, one of our patients coded right in front of them today. This was a woman in her 60s who had been admitted back in April for an infected pacemaker; the infection had spread to her spine, forming an epidural abscess. During her stay in the CCU, she went into multi-organ failure (intubated, needed dialysis, platelets fell to 19 and only responded to HLA-matched platelets, became jaundiced from a failing liver, etc), and we all knew that her prognosis was very poor. Yet through it all, she never complained; she always smiled when she saw us and (once she was extubated) said she felt all right. When we saw her this morning, she was her usual alert and smiling self, albeit more short of breath than usual. Finally it became obvious that she would need to be reintubated, and I felt sad b/c she'd being doing better.
Then she went into PEA, and half the residents ran into the room to assist in the code. One of the Davids donned gloves, ready to help with compressions, but the fellow told them to stay out of the room. So while half of us stayed in the nurse's station to round with the attendings (and sneaking peeks at the tele monitor all the while), the other half stayed in the room with the patient. Fortunately I knew my patients well enough to present them while my resident (who was post-call, too) was helping with the code. Twice this lady recovered with the help of bicarb and amiodarone and epi, but in the end it wasn't enough. Time of death was shortly before noon.
One of the residents later commented that the interns had looked terrified while all this was going on, and I don't blame them. These were all prelims going into radiology, anesthesiology, or PM&R; they probably haven't done a medicine rotation in many months. I, too, was jittery when presenting to the heart failure attending (who's pretty high up there on the cardiology totem pole), and at one point he said, "Calm down, you've got these guys to replace you, and soon you're going to be the boss of them. Scary thought, isn't it?"
Yes, it definitely was. Although the prospect of being a resident (and being expected to teach interns and med students) was frightening, it's also exciting. What's not to love about limited overnight calls (residents only do 30 hr shifts in the units) and having fewer notes to write per day? On the other hand, now I'm expected to do chart dictations and actually know stuff. It's easier to get away with being stupid as an intern, but as a resident I'll have no excuse. One of the cards fellows already knows I have zero cardiology knowledge, and he's going to be the CCU fellow again in 5 months when I return to CCU as a resident. My only hope is that by then, I'll have gained enough knowledge to be more confident as a resident.
The newest batch of interns arrived this morning to shadow us for a couple of hours to see what their jobs tomorrow would be like. They showed up in their brand new white coats and notepads in hand ready to jot down new information. We were pretty amused to find that of the four new CCU interns, three were named David; we joked that they'd have to be called by their last names to tell them apart. One of the Davids would be taking my spot tomorrow, so I told him a little about each patient and what was going on. The fellows, too, welcomed the interns, and one of them immediately sat down and started teaching them about Swan Ganz catheters, right heart caths, and other things essential to the CCU. It was surprising because he'd never taught my fellow interns and me any of this (we had to figure it out on our own), but I guess with these guys being new to medicine and the CCU they had to learn quickly what was important. Our attendings, too, were interested in meeting the new interns "fresh out of medical school;" when the heart failure attending came by and didn't see the interns anywhere (b/c they were in another patient's room), he wondered where they'd gone.
Unfortunately for the new interns, one of our patients coded right in front of them today. This was a woman in her 60s who had been admitted back in April for an infected pacemaker; the infection had spread to her spine, forming an epidural abscess. During her stay in the CCU, she went into multi-organ failure (intubated, needed dialysis, platelets fell to 19 and only responded to HLA-matched platelets, became jaundiced from a failing liver, etc), and we all knew that her prognosis was very poor. Yet through it all, she never complained; she always smiled when she saw us and (once she was extubated) said she felt all right. When we saw her this morning, she was her usual alert and smiling self, albeit more short of breath than usual. Finally it became obvious that she would need to be reintubated, and I felt sad b/c she'd being doing better.
Then she went into PEA, and half the residents ran into the room to assist in the code. One of the Davids donned gloves, ready to help with compressions, but the fellow told them to stay out of the room. So while half of us stayed in the nurse's station to round with the attendings (and sneaking peeks at the tele monitor all the while), the other half stayed in the room with the patient. Fortunately I knew my patients well enough to present them while my resident (who was post-call, too) was helping with the code. Twice this lady recovered with the help of bicarb and amiodarone and epi, but in the end it wasn't enough. Time of death was shortly before noon.
One of the residents later commented that the interns had looked terrified while all this was going on, and I don't blame them. These were all prelims going into radiology, anesthesiology, or PM&R; they probably haven't done a medicine rotation in many months. I, too, was jittery when presenting to the heart failure attending (who's pretty high up there on the cardiology totem pole), and at one point he said, "Calm down, you've got these guys to replace you, and soon you're going to be the boss of them. Scary thought, isn't it?"
Yes, it definitely was. Although the prospect of being a resident (and being expected to teach interns and med students) was frightening, it's also exciting. What's not to love about limited overnight calls (residents only do 30 hr shifts in the units) and having fewer notes to write per day? On the other hand, now I'm expected to do chart dictations and actually know stuff. It's easier to get away with being stupid as an intern, but as a resident I'll have no excuse. One of the cards fellows already knows I have zero cardiology knowledge, and he's going to be the CCU fellow again in 5 months when I return to CCU as a resident. My only hope is that by then, I'll have gained enough knowledge to be more confident as a resident.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Doctors Are Not Gods
Last month I finally got a chance to read The House of God, which came highly recommended by several attendings at this hospital. For those of you who don't know, The House of God describes a brand new doctor's (mis)adventures during his intern year at a prestigious Harvard-affiliated hospital (aka the House of God) during the 1970s, when overnight was q3 and the intern didn't leave until 5-6 pm the following day (essentially a 36 hr shift). The main character starts his intern year fresh-faced and eager to save lives and help people, but halfway through the book he and his fellow interns were losing their tempers at patients, kicking at elevator doors for being too slow, or secretly euthanizing dying patients with KCl. All this sounds ridiculous to the newly graduated medical student, but interns and residents can definitely relate to the long work hours and the crap we put up with at home and at work.
I'd be lying if I said that I was the same person I was one year ago before intern year started. This year has changed me, and not necessarily for the better. I've become more disillusioned, more angry, and more cynical. When the same patient comes to the hospital week after week for abdominal pain after drinking a pint or two of vodka, then leaving the hospital AMA when he doesn't get narcotics for his pain, it's hard to be sympathetic. And unfortunately, that patient represents a huge chunk of the general patient population here. Sometimes I feel like medicine is draining away my humanity and turning me into a robot. Quite a difference from the medical student who liked taking the time to get to know her patients and strongly believed that doctors should be better listeners and better advocates for their patients. I still believe that, but sometimes I find myself forgetting how to become a better doctor.
One of the patients I had to cover for in the CCU last night was a 42-year-old man with A-fib, chronic kidney disease (on HD) and end-stage cardiomyopathy (EF 5%). Despite having a pulse ox of 100%, he felt like he couldn't breathe properly and was afraid to fall asleep for fear he'd wake up struggling for breath. I assured him that his room was right outside the nurse's station, that he was on tele and we could easily monitor his pulse ox and heart rate, and that his call button was within reach, but he would not be dissuaded. "When I woke up just now, I was panicking! I don't know where the call button is when I panic! I'm scared, Doc! You need to fix this tonight!" The problem: this guy couldn't be fixed. His heart was a quivering mass of muscle on echo, barely alive and pumping right. He couldn't undergo dialysis to get fluid removed because he was too hypotensive. He was also obese with OSA and for some reason has not been on a CPAP ever since his admission. When I told him we couldn't safely dialyse him, he asked if I've been hearing a single word he's said. "I can't breathe! I'm scared!"
His nurse had pretty much given up listening to him rant, so a great deal of my night (which I would have preferred to be in bed) was spent at his bedside, listening to him rant about how he's done everything right ever since he's been in the hospital in order to get well (not true; he's refused beta blockers and cardioversion on several occasions for his symptomatic A-fib), but despite multiple tests and X-rays and even a defibrillator implantation, he's been getting worse. "You aren't doing anything!" he said. "You're a doctor, aren't you? What do they teach you in medical school? There's got to be SOME technology out there that can fix this! You say that my blood pressure's low and you can't give me lasix, I get that, but if I went to the emergency room, they wouldn't just let me lie here and do nothing! Can they send an emergency room doctor here?" I didn't have the heart to tell him that if he did show up in the ER with SOB and an EF of 5%, they'd immediately turf him to CCU. After listening to him rant for a good 20-30 min or so, I called my resident and asked what we should do. We ended up calling the cards fellow, who said we could put him on pressors to get his pressure up and give him some Bumex for his ease of mind. Guess what? He didn't put out a single drop of urine because his kidney function was so bad. He'd officially failed medical management.
Needless to say I didn't get much rest during last night (on top of which I had to share a call room with the heart failure intern and he was snoring loud enough to shake the walls), and in the morning, I told the attending what had happened during the night. She, too, wasn't sure why he was feeling short of breath when his sats were fine, but was concerned that his BP was too low for him to tolerate HD. "If we can't dialyze him, then he'll have to go home on hospice care. End of the road," she said. Later she went into the patient's room and told him the cold hard truth: that if his BP doesn't improve enough to tolerate dialysis, then he's going to die. She then called the patient's wife to the hospital to explain the same thing. I wasn't present at that meeting, but I later saw his wife enter his room with two toddlers (he has seven kids) to see him. Almost immediately, he started venting his frustrations (and reasonably so) about how nothing is helping him, and his wife yelled back, "Are you giving up? If you're gonna give up, you let me know!" The doors couldn't close fast enough to give them privacy.
It's times like this where I wonder why I chose this profession, if only to have patients yell at me and pretty much accuse me of being a crappy doctor, and I wonder if quitting medicine would really be such a bad thing. But that's when I remember that I am only human, that it's all right to be upset and frustrated at times. As a med school professor once told me, doctors aren't gods. We make mistakes, and we can't always fix everything wrong with a person, as much as we'd like to try.
I'd be lying if I said that I was the same person I was one year ago before intern year started. This year has changed me, and not necessarily for the better. I've become more disillusioned, more angry, and more cynical. When the same patient comes to the hospital week after week for abdominal pain after drinking a pint or two of vodka, then leaving the hospital AMA when he doesn't get narcotics for his pain, it's hard to be sympathetic. And unfortunately, that patient represents a huge chunk of the general patient population here. Sometimes I feel like medicine is draining away my humanity and turning me into a robot. Quite a difference from the medical student who liked taking the time to get to know her patients and strongly believed that doctors should be better listeners and better advocates for their patients. I still believe that, but sometimes I find myself forgetting how to become a better doctor.
One of the patients I had to cover for in the CCU last night was a 42-year-old man with A-fib, chronic kidney disease (on HD) and end-stage cardiomyopathy (EF 5%). Despite having a pulse ox of 100%, he felt like he couldn't breathe properly and was afraid to fall asleep for fear he'd wake up struggling for breath. I assured him that his room was right outside the nurse's station, that he was on tele and we could easily monitor his pulse ox and heart rate, and that his call button was within reach, but he would not be dissuaded. "When I woke up just now, I was panicking! I don't know where the call button is when I panic! I'm scared, Doc! You need to fix this tonight!" The problem: this guy couldn't be fixed. His heart was a quivering mass of muscle on echo, barely alive and pumping right. He couldn't undergo dialysis to get fluid removed because he was too hypotensive. He was also obese with OSA and for some reason has not been on a CPAP ever since his admission. When I told him we couldn't safely dialyse him, he asked if I've been hearing a single word he's said. "I can't breathe! I'm scared!"
His nurse had pretty much given up listening to him rant, so a great deal of my night (which I would have preferred to be in bed) was spent at his bedside, listening to him rant about how he's done everything right ever since he's been in the hospital in order to get well (not true; he's refused beta blockers and cardioversion on several occasions for his symptomatic A-fib), but despite multiple tests and X-rays and even a defibrillator implantation, he's been getting worse. "You aren't doing anything!" he said. "You're a doctor, aren't you? What do they teach you in medical school? There's got to be SOME technology out there that can fix this! You say that my blood pressure's low and you can't give me lasix, I get that, but if I went to the emergency room, they wouldn't just let me lie here and do nothing! Can they send an emergency room doctor here?" I didn't have the heart to tell him that if he did show up in the ER with SOB and an EF of 5%, they'd immediately turf him to CCU. After listening to him rant for a good 20-30 min or so, I called my resident and asked what we should do. We ended up calling the cards fellow, who said we could put him on pressors to get his pressure up and give him some Bumex for his ease of mind. Guess what? He didn't put out a single drop of urine because his kidney function was so bad. He'd officially failed medical management.
Needless to say I didn't get much rest during last night (on top of which I had to share a call room with the heart failure intern and he was snoring loud enough to shake the walls), and in the morning, I told the attending what had happened during the night. She, too, wasn't sure why he was feeling short of breath when his sats were fine, but was concerned that his BP was too low for him to tolerate HD. "If we can't dialyze him, then he'll have to go home on hospice care. End of the road," she said. Later she went into the patient's room and told him the cold hard truth: that if his BP doesn't improve enough to tolerate dialysis, then he's going to die. She then called the patient's wife to the hospital to explain the same thing. I wasn't present at that meeting, but I later saw his wife enter his room with two toddlers (he has seven kids) to see him. Almost immediately, he started venting his frustrations (and reasonably so) about how nothing is helping him, and his wife yelled back, "Are you giving up? If you're gonna give up, you let me know!" The doors couldn't close fast enough to give them privacy.
It's times like this where I wonder why I chose this profession, if only to have patients yell at me and pretty much accuse me of being a crappy doctor, and I wonder if quitting medicine would really be such a bad thing. But that's when I remember that I am only human, that it's all right to be upset and frustrated at times. As a med school professor once told me, doctors aren't gods. We make mistakes, and we can't always fix everything wrong with a person, as much as we'd like to try.
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
A Hole in the Heart
I started my CCU rotation last week, and even though the cap for each team is 4 and I only have 3 patients right now, I'm feeling more than slightly overwhelmed. The patients who come up here range anywhere from relatively healthy (rule-out cocaine-induced MI or measuring Swan-Ganz numbers on a heart transplant candidate) to actively circling the drain. I haven't done a unit month since September, and it shows. On top of that cardiology is not my forte, so compared to some of my fellow CCU interns who do like cards, I'm the dumb one of the bunch.
Last week an 81-year-old woman was transferred here from another hospital because she had developed a VSD within five days of having a massive MI. From the start we knew she would be a hard case. She was intubated but had an air leak, had a white count of 25, had elevated creatinine, and had 300 ccs of coffee grounds suctioned from her stomach. The biggest issue, however, was the hole in her heart, the VSD. On echo it was located near the apex of the heart. CT surgery evaluated her and said her mortality risk was too high for open heart surgery. Interventional cardiology said they could probably do it, but the risk of failure was high b/c the patient had a flailing tricuspid valve that could potentially interfere with repair efforts. On top of all that, she had a balloon pump to help her heart and was on 2-3 pressors.
The biggest challenge was her family. Her husband, daughter, and son-in-law were all physicians; in fact, her daughter was once a chief resident here and her son-in-law gave the residents a quick talk on acids and bases when we discussed the patient's acidosis with him. They knew, I'm sure, that the patient's condition was poor, but they still insisted that everything be done, as they saw the VSD repair as her only hope for survival. The interventional cards team took her down to the cath lab around noon, and someone suggested that she needed all the prayers she could get to make it through the procedure.
She returned to the floor 5-6 hrs later, and the fellow looked worn out. He said that the procedure itself went well, that she no longer had a VSD, but afterwards she lost electrical activity in her heart and had to have a pacemaker put in. She left the floor on only 2 pressors, and came back with 5. Despite being maxed out on the pressors, her pressure continued to decline. As the intern (and scutmokey), I was told to take elevator 16 flights down to collect PRBCs and FFP for the patient (who was actively bleeding) or else throw in bicarb drip orders into the computer. Her ABG came back with a pH of 6.8 and a bicarb less than 10. 2 residents and I stayed an extra 2 hrs to help my resident (who was overnight) keep this woman stable, but things were not looking very good. When my resident finally sent me home, I passed the conference room and saw the patient's daughter sitting alone in the conference room. Surely she knew her mother was in bad shape, worse off now than she'd been before the VSD repair, and I was just grateful that she was not in the CCU with us watching us work. That would have been way too much pressure on us.
What upsets me the most is that even after 11 months of internship, I still don't know what to do when patients crash like this. I was just standing around waiting for orders while the residents were already gowned up at the bedside or on the phone making the necessary phone calls. I was almost no better than a medical student. I was useless. And my defense mechanism for all this? Daydreaming about being back in Austin, taking a dip at Barton Springs Pool, sipping milk tea from Momokos while walking down the Drag....*sigh* I wish I were back in TX.
Last week an 81-year-old woman was transferred here from another hospital because she had developed a VSD within five days of having a massive MI. From the start we knew she would be a hard case. She was intubated but had an air leak, had a white count of 25, had elevated creatinine, and had 300 ccs of coffee grounds suctioned from her stomach. The biggest issue, however, was the hole in her heart, the VSD. On echo it was located near the apex of the heart. CT surgery evaluated her and said her mortality risk was too high for open heart surgery. Interventional cardiology said they could probably do it, but the risk of failure was high b/c the patient had a flailing tricuspid valve that could potentially interfere with repair efforts. On top of all that, she had a balloon pump to help her heart and was on 2-3 pressors.
The biggest challenge was her family. Her husband, daughter, and son-in-law were all physicians; in fact, her daughter was once a chief resident here and her son-in-law gave the residents a quick talk on acids and bases when we discussed the patient's acidosis with him. They knew, I'm sure, that the patient's condition was poor, but they still insisted that everything be done, as they saw the VSD repair as her only hope for survival. The interventional cards team took her down to the cath lab around noon, and someone suggested that she needed all the prayers she could get to make it through the procedure.
She returned to the floor 5-6 hrs later, and the fellow looked worn out. He said that the procedure itself went well, that she no longer had a VSD, but afterwards she lost electrical activity in her heart and had to have a pacemaker put in. She left the floor on only 2 pressors, and came back with 5. Despite being maxed out on the pressors, her pressure continued to decline. As the intern (and scutmokey), I was told to take elevator 16 flights down to collect PRBCs and FFP for the patient (who was actively bleeding) or else throw in bicarb drip orders into the computer. Her ABG came back with a pH of 6.8 and a bicarb less than 10. 2 residents and I stayed an extra 2 hrs to help my resident (who was overnight) keep this woman stable, but things were not looking very good. When my resident finally sent me home, I passed the conference room and saw the patient's daughter sitting alone in the conference room. Surely she knew her mother was in bad shape, worse off now than she'd been before the VSD repair, and I was just grateful that she was not in the CCU with us watching us work. That would have been way too much pressure on us.
What upsets me the most is that even after 11 months of internship, I still don't know what to do when patients crash like this. I was just standing around waiting for orders while the residents were already gowned up at the bedside or on the phone making the necessary phone calls. I was almost no better than a medical student. I was useless. And my defense mechanism for all this? Daydreaming about being back in Austin, taking a dip at Barton Springs Pool, sipping milk tea from Momokos while walking down the Drag....*sigh* I wish I were back in TX.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
AMH 3: Looking back
Yesterday I finished my last floor month of intern year (not counting CCU in June, which is strictly a unit month), and boy was I glad to be done. The service was pretty full the entire month; the lowest my census ever got was 7 (cap was 14). Even worse, this was the only service where I went home worrying about my patients' well-being, because they were that sick. When I took a day off to attend a convention, I sent the intern covering for me a long email telling him everything he needed to follow up on and later called him to make sure everything was fine. For the most part the service was evenly split between general medicine patients (university) and heme-onc patients, but both sides had several rocks that, for various reasons, wore me down both mentally and emotionally.
On the medicine side, we had a man admitted for nausea and abd pain with bilirubin levels that rose from 12 to 18; we were just watching him turn more yellow each day. Liver biopsy just showed EtOH disease, and surgery said his GB was fine and didn't need to be removed (patent bile duct). When I left the service they still didn't know what to do for him. Then we had a 20-year-old girl with a horribly displaced hip due to Legg-Calve-Perthes dz that ortho won't operate on b/c she's too young for a hip replacement, so she's here for pain management and inpatient rehab almost indefinitely b/c her insurance won't cover acute rehab. They both wanted answers as to what would happen to them next, answers I did not have.
The heme-onc side was no better. One patient who's been on the service longer than me was a 35-year-old woman with metastatic breast cancer. She has jaundice, massive ascites, and major LE edema due to her liver mets, not to mention horrible back pain, but she's fighting the cancer the best she can for the sake of her husband and two kids. Her support system is excellent, as she always has either her mother, husband, or sister at her side, but when I see her CA27-29 rising week by week I know the chemo is not working. Then there was an older woman with CLL and extensive lymphadenopathy who'd been spiking fevers of 101-102 almost every day for the past week or so, and every night we drew cultures on her only for them to be negative. My last day at work, she was frustrated with the daily lab draws and was refusing further cultures. She accused us of causing her nothing but more pain ever since she was hospitalized, and I always dreaded going to see her because she would always accuse me of not doing anything to help her (whether it was making her LE edema go away, help her cure her constipation, etc). Every time I left her room I felt like I just took a beating.
To make things worse, the last week of this rotation I became sick with what started as nasal congestion but later progressed to full-blown sinusitis. I constantly felt feverish (even though my thermometer kept claiming my temp was 97.7 at the max) and kept wads of tissue in my coat because I couldn't breathe. Nyquil and Dayquil did nothing to help, though Sudafed helped a lot. My resident could tell I was miserable and once told me to lie down in the call room while he took my phone (we carry SpectraLink phones at this hospital so we can be reached easily). That gave me about 30 minutes of uninterrupted sleep, which I desperately needed. I ended up writing myself a script of Amoxil (signed by a fellow intern), which I believe is working, but what I really needed and could not get was sleep. While I was sick, I kept waking up in the middle of the night to either blow my nose or because I was too hot. The night before I had overnight call, I woke up with belly pain and ended up throwing up (mild food poisoning). Fortunately that was a one time thing.
I ended my last week on a black weekend, with overnight call/night float this past Sunday. And that was when everything went to hell. My CLL patient developed yet another fever but had such a bad case of rigors, shaking, and tachypnea that I was afraid I'd have to send her to the unit (especially after her CXR came back reading "mild failure"). Fortunately the rigors subsided and she fell asleep, but damn that scared me. Then my other patients all wanted to "talk" to me, and I wondered why they couldn't ask to talk to me during the day rather than at night. Sometime around midnight, I developed a headache and felt myself getting warm again (see what no rest will do to you despite being on antibiotics?), and I was afraid the hell would never end. Fortunately I only got about 4-5 phone calls after 1 a.m. and got a few hours of sleep. The overnight resident took pity on me and didn't call me for any admissions (to which I'll always be grateful to him for), but did snag me and the intern at 1:30 a.m. to teach us about how to manage hyperkalemia. In that case, the teaching was warranted (I had a pt with a K of 6.1) and helpful. And once my shift ended, I went home and spent most of the day in bed, relieved to be done.
Now I have 2 weeks of heme-onc elective ahead of me, and I think this will give me a chance to see if I really like heme-onc or not. If my last month was any indication, I don't know if I can deal with the emotional burden that comes with being an oncologist. But the interest is still there at least.
On the medicine side, we had a man admitted for nausea and abd pain with bilirubin levels that rose from 12 to 18; we were just watching him turn more yellow each day. Liver biopsy just showed EtOH disease, and surgery said his GB was fine and didn't need to be removed (patent bile duct). When I left the service they still didn't know what to do for him. Then we had a 20-year-old girl with a horribly displaced hip due to Legg-Calve-Perthes dz that ortho won't operate on b/c she's too young for a hip replacement, so she's here for pain management and inpatient rehab almost indefinitely b/c her insurance won't cover acute rehab. They both wanted answers as to what would happen to them next, answers I did not have.
The heme-onc side was no better. One patient who's been on the service longer than me was a 35-year-old woman with metastatic breast cancer. She has jaundice, massive ascites, and major LE edema due to her liver mets, not to mention horrible back pain, but she's fighting the cancer the best she can for the sake of her husband and two kids. Her support system is excellent, as she always has either her mother, husband, or sister at her side, but when I see her CA27-29 rising week by week I know the chemo is not working. Then there was an older woman with CLL and extensive lymphadenopathy who'd been spiking fevers of 101-102 almost every day for the past week or so, and every night we drew cultures on her only for them to be negative. My last day at work, she was frustrated with the daily lab draws and was refusing further cultures. She accused us of causing her nothing but more pain ever since she was hospitalized, and I always dreaded going to see her because she would always accuse me of not doing anything to help her (whether it was making her LE edema go away, help her cure her constipation, etc). Every time I left her room I felt like I just took a beating.
To make things worse, the last week of this rotation I became sick with what started as nasal congestion but later progressed to full-blown sinusitis. I constantly felt feverish (even though my thermometer kept claiming my temp was 97.7 at the max) and kept wads of tissue in my coat because I couldn't breathe. Nyquil and Dayquil did nothing to help, though Sudafed helped a lot. My resident could tell I was miserable and once told me to lie down in the call room while he took my phone (we carry SpectraLink phones at this hospital so we can be reached easily). That gave me about 30 minutes of uninterrupted sleep, which I desperately needed. I ended up writing myself a script of Amoxil (signed by a fellow intern), which I believe is working, but what I really needed and could not get was sleep. While I was sick, I kept waking up in the middle of the night to either blow my nose or because I was too hot. The night before I had overnight call, I woke up with belly pain and ended up throwing up (mild food poisoning). Fortunately that was a one time thing.
I ended my last week on a black weekend, with overnight call/night float this past Sunday. And that was when everything went to hell. My CLL patient developed yet another fever but had such a bad case of rigors, shaking, and tachypnea that I was afraid I'd have to send her to the unit (especially after her CXR came back reading "mild failure"). Fortunately the rigors subsided and she fell asleep, but damn that scared me. Then my other patients all wanted to "talk" to me, and I wondered why they couldn't ask to talk to me during the day rather than at night. Sometime around midnight, I developed a headache and felt myself getting warm again (see what no rest will do to you despite being on antibiotics?), and I was afraid the hell would never end. Fortunately I only got about 4-5 phone calls after 1 a.m. and got a few hours of sleep. The overnight resident took pity on me and didn't call me for any admissions (to which I'll always be grateful to him for), but did snag me and the intern at 1:30 a.m. to teach us about how to manage hyperkalemia. In that case, the teaching was warranted (I had a pt with a K of 6.1) and helpful. And once my shift ended, I went home and spent most of the day in bed, relieved to be done.
Now I have 2 weeks of heme-onc elective ahead of me, and I think this will give me a chance to see if I really like heme-onc or not. If my last month was any indication, I don't know if I can deal with the emotional burden that comes with being an oncologist. But the interest is still there at least.
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