It's almost September

Yay. I survived my month in the PICU. All I can say is THANK GOD IT'S OVER.
I went out with a bang, on my last call, in typical fashion. My attending asked me "what are you? the shit magnet?!?" And yes, it's true, all month I've been the Shit Magnet.

My last night, I admitted a young boy who tried to intentionally hang himself, an oncology patient who is basically dying and has a tremendous amount of uncontrollable bony pain, and a teenager who got into a gun-fight with someone and got shot 6 times in the abdomen.

For the next 2 weeks, I'm doing night shifts as the senior on general peds. Not my favorite rotation but way better than the ICU. This weekend, one of my best friends from high school is coming to visit me for our pseudo-"wedding shower" thrown by our best man. So excited.

Can this week get any suckier?

Wow. It's been a horrible week.

My last call, not only did I get zero sleep, and had to do a spinal tap at 5:30 in the morning, post-call, but three patients died in 24 hours. They were all mostly expected but STILL. Then I just found out that another one of my patients died. That's 4 patients this week who have passed away, and 5 total for the month, and counting... since we have another 1.5 weeks left.

I don't even know what to say. Death is always hard. But when kids die, it's a whole different emotional rollercoaster. The scary part is that I didn't even once cry while it was happening. I didn't even really feel that sad. I was just so exhausted and almost relieved that it happened rather uneventfully. Not until I came home and said it aloud, did the gravity of what had happened, hit me like a ton of bricks. The weight that I had been carrying inside, that I pretended not to carry, just came crashing down and I cried myself to sleep.

The one highlight of this week is that our good friend from medical school is in town. We drove out to the airport area to have dinner last night, had a great meal, whereupon we gorged ourselves on great steak and strawberry shortcake... only to find out my car brakes had been destroyed somehow. I've never had my car actually break down, so I guess there's always a first time. and I shouldn't be surprised since I do drive a car that's almost 19 years old, but really? Did this need to happen this week?!?

A few minutes of pure terror

My first day off in weeks. I sleep in as much as I can, wake up, have some cereal and my morning coffee in my favorite mug, turn the computer on and try to check my email.

It times out and gives me an error message.

I try opening a web browser and the same thing happens. My internet is broken.

I restart and reconnect everything, including my computer. Nothing. I'm at my wit's end at this point. I want to call tech support but I don't even have a way of finding out their number without the Internet!!

But luckily, the third time must really be the charm because the third time I restarted my computer, it is now miraculously working again. I don't get it but I'm happy again.

We all know this but I just realized once again how technology-dependent we are, as a society.

my first week back in the ICU

Generally, I love my job. Actually, it should really be "job" in quotes since we, as residents, are stuck in this weird not-a-student-anymore but not-done-training position.

But being a resident in the intensive care unit sucks. It's my least favorite thing to do. Or maybe my second-to-least favorite. The first couple days were hard because the patients are complicated and I felt I didn't know any of the patients. My first call was hard not because I got a lot of new patients, but because Stuff kept happening to the old patients. I got zero sleep. My second call was hard because I had 11 new admissions. The World Record is 14 admissions to the ICU in one night. I am really not out to break the Record.

Needless to say I got zero sleep that night too. I haven't had a day off in two straight weeks. and I hate every second that I spend in the ICU. I'm grumpy.

But the good news is that I'm off tomorrow! So excited. Lots of errands to run!