2 down!

again, i went into the hospital at 6am on Monday and came out at noon on Tuesday. this was my 2nd 30 hour call and now i wont have any more for the rest of the rotations [2 more weeks.] It actually wasnt a bad night because i got a really interesting case to admit from the ER. this poor guy was having severe back pain, fever, chills and night sweats for 1 month. he had been to a couple docs who gave him pain meds and had even been to the ER to check it out. in the ER they did an X ray which came back normal so they sent him home. finally, he couldnt stand it anymore and he and his wife came back to the ER. we did lots of blood work and imaging on him and when the MRI came back, we saw that he had osteomyelitis in his spine! thats a pretty serious bone infection. he was in so much pain and i felt terrible for him. [side note, it might be TB--Pott's disease-- because he is from Mexico and has had a lot of exposure to TB. thats a pretty rare disease so to see one in my career is pretty cool.]

as i walked out of the ER, i stopped dead in my tracks walking out of the entrance. at the front lobby, i found my 2nd year resident speaking with 27 people [i counted] of all ages. she was talking in a serious voice about an ICU patient who they all came to see. turns out, they were here for their family meeting about wether they wanted to do surgery on their 91yo relative or too let her die peacefully. they were all waiting around and the resident had to tell them the meeting was tomorrow at 7:30am not tonight at 7:30pm. ouch. well, turns out they were all really nice about it but damn, thats a lotta pressure to talk to that many people at once about a patient she didnt know too much about [but acted her way out of that one.]

Tuesday morning, after ~5 hours of sleep, i presented my patient at morning report to all the students and interns. it was a good case. they i saw my patients, wrote my progress notes, rounded with my team, and got the hell outta there to get some sleep.