July 29, 2008

• Bazaar

  My job is pretty awesome at times.

  Seriously, I get to do tons of stuff that I find really cool.  Intubating someone?  You know, rendering them unconscious via medication and then carefully inserting a breathing tube into the trachea to allow them to breathe when otherwise they’d likely die… very cool.  Lumbar puncture?  Obtaining spinal fluid from the area surrounding the actual spinal cord (ok, I know… its after the cord dissipates, but it’s close enough)… quite cool.  The hours are awesome, and, if I’m going to be completely honest, the pay is pretty sweet as well.

  However, sometimes it’s the worst job in the world.  How often do you have to tell people that their loved one is not dead.  How often do you have to tell a pregnant lady that she is miscarrying and the potential baby she has been harboring for the last 18 months is not going to slowly come out as a depressing bloody mess.  How often do you have to give rectal exams, pelvic exams, or see people when they are crying after they have been sexually assaulted.

  And then you get the days like today.

  A rather bazaar mixture of both.  But how best to explain it… I know, via multiple random pics,
                            

  GO TEAM GOOGLE IMAGES FOR INSTANT FUN PICS!

  One guy has a horrible bleed in his brain (that’s bad),
   

  but I got to intubate (that’s fun, and it went well, so good),
   

  but I had to talk to family and give the bad news about the brain bleed(that’s bad).
  

  I had another insanely anxious guy with chest pain and everything turned out great (that’s good).
   
  I had another quite young guy who has newly diagnosed lung cancer (very very bad).
  

  I also had a delightful drunk guy in the hall who sang songs for the staff (that’s good, and amusing). 
  

  I also had a patient that I admitted a month ago with a severe stroke,
  but recovered well (that’s great)
   

  but now she had pneumonia (that sucks).
  
  Then I had a friends father who was in a bad fall and broke some bones (that sucks)
  ,
  but I got to see my good friend when he visited (that’s cool, and fun, but bad)
  
          
  Kind of weird, no?  Lots of emotional ups and downs and ups and downs.  Here’s a pain scale that is used to evaluate pain in children (seriously).  I think my emotions kept jumping from “A” to “I” to “A” to “I” and by the end I was so mysteriously melancholy that I ended at “E”.   Not  happy, not sad, just morose.
  
  Actually I guess I’m a little more towards the happy side.  The nurses gave me the nickname “Chunks.”  I thought it was cool to have a nickname.  Unfortunately, I had to earn that nickname… which I did during my intubation when I got a collection of vomit and lung-butter splattered all over myself.  Mmm, just call me chunks.

               
  

  • 4:17 am
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