A lot on my mind

Not much of an update this week. I didn't do any stitching at all last week. Looking back I'm not really sure what I did. Oh wait for a couple of days I was reading a book for a book discussion on my current rotation. The book was called "Roadmap to Holland". It is the story and sort of a guide to living the first 18 months with a child with Down's syndrome. Many great resources in the end of the book. The book itself....well, she doesn't talk about the child with Down's as much as she does his twin.

Otherwise, I've been going to work, coming home and fiddling on the computer. I'm not sleeping very well right now, a problem that I unfortunately have on months that I'm not on call (I think I get used to being so sleep deprived that I can sleep anywhere that when I'm not that tired I can't sleep). I'm still enjoying my rotation and will be sad to see it end (doing Behavior and Development). When I started residency, I thought it was likely that I would specialize in this area. I'm pretty convinced at this point that I will. I love the special needs kids.

DId my mommy call yesterday. It was pretty quiet. Only 3 calls. Unfortunately the first of the 3 occurred at 2:15 am Sunday morning. Did I mention my call didn't start until 9:00 am? GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR. And about mid day I started feeling lousy. Spent quality time admiring my bathroom. Called in sick today since well, it's a good thing there was a bag in my car on the way to work today. Doctors.....not enough sense to stay home when they are sick. I'm feeling much better tonight.

I'm hoping my blahs will go away soon. I'm forcing myself to go out and interact with people even though I feel like climbing into my cave. The next 2 months are going to be hard, I need to find a way to enjoy my time while it lasts.

Enough rambling tonight.

JEOPARDY!

So one of the new responsibilities I have as a senior resident is to take jeopardy call. Essentially I am on call if anyone calls in sick, has a death in the family, gives birth. etc. I could be asked to go anywhere. NICU, PICU, ER, be an intern again. My first jeopardy call was yesterday. I could get called anywhere from 6 am to 6 am. I was like a deer in headlights every time the pager went off. I'd feel this internal groan mixed with trepidation. Thankfully, my pager NEVER WENT OFF and I spent my day on my regular rotation, ent home and went to bed (only slept 2 hours the night before) and continued praying the pager would stay quiet. IT DID!!! My next jeopardy in on Sunday, but Jeopardy 2 this time meaning someone else is called before me. I also have another "new responsibility" on Sunday. MOMMY CALL! My baby has a fever what should I do, my baby has a sunburn what should I do. Hopefully it won't be more exciting than that...lol. I'm actually looking forward to mommy call. But I'll be stuck basically at home attached to my pager all day so that I have access to the computer. Oh whatever will I do with myself?

I did get a bit of stitching on my fairy last week. She doesn't have a body but she has some wings! I think this has been one of the easier fairies. She's a lot of fun though!

A punch in the stomach

My greatest strength and my greatest weakness as a physician is the closeness I feel toward my patients. With that comes both great joy and terrible sorrow. How suffocating the sorrow can feel. How crippling it can be.

As is my habit, I signed on to the hospital electronic medical record tonight to check on some of my old patients that I knew were inpatient. Three of my patients were in ICU this week. One, a child that I saw through a terrible seizure and a stroke has made it out of the ICU and onto the main floor of the hospital and is seemingly doing well. Two, one of my cardiac babies, still on a ventilator and appears to be holding pretty steady.

And three, a beautiful 12 year old girl who I admitted in February with relapsed leukemia, whose only chance for survival was a bone marrow transplant, who has not seen her home since that day in February when I admitted her. Her name is gone. It is no longer on the inpatient census. I cannot breathe, I know what this means. SHe had been doing so well until late last month. She was looking forward to going home with her new fresh healthy bone marrow. She was smiling again. And now she is gone.

It was not unexpected. I knew she was doing very poorly with the most sophisticated ventilator being used in an attempt to help her breathe as they tried to find an explanation for why she was struggling so. I knew 2 weeks ago that she likely wasn't going to make it. Still, the tears are falling now, and I write as a way to release some of that pain. I pray for her and her family with the hope that she is now dancing in heaven with her hair grown back and a big smile on her face.

I close with my heart heavy tonight and an almost frantic feeling that I should do something anything to make sure I make the most out of everything in my life. Will this ever get any easier? Do I want it to?

A rewarding day

I so often write about the emotionally difficult and exhausting things that happen in my daily life, I thought it would be nice to post a more happy event.

My favorite part of residency is my continuity clinic. The patient's I see here are MY patients. I am the Dr. They identify me as their Dr. and though I am supervised, within reason, I treat the patients as I wish.

A couple of months ago I saw a new patient, a 5 year with family concern for autistic like behaviors. This child was completely out of control. He could sit still, he didn't listen, he always played by himself and would have temper tantrums. He did talk but he was very difficult to understand and could not make any s or f sounds. He was tremendously uncooperative with the exam. To complicate things, he also had a hoarse quality to his voice that had persisted for a year. I was very concerned about his development and knew he needed some more evaluation so I made a bunch of referals.....to ENT, speech, hearing eval, behavior and development.

Today I got the results of his hearing evaluation. He has profound hearing loss in both ears. Unusual that this was not caught sooner.....but easy to miss because he was such a difficult child to examine. He is getting fitted for hearing aids and I have high hopes that this will turn this kiddo's life around. Of course I also gave a big sigh of relief because I didn't miss it...and let's face it, he's 5 years old it's been missed multiple times before.