I saw over 100 patients with many different types of illnesses. I learned so much about the clinical aspect of medicine. I also learned about the regulations and business side of medicine. I learned about the red tape we, as physicians, must work around and the hoops we have to jump through. I learned which medicines were on the $4 list and saw how doctors must work and adjust numbers and doses so that patients can afford their medications. I learned a lot about my future colleagues and current classmates. I worked with two very different teams of residents and students and I learned to gel with both.
I learned a lot in 8 weeks... but I still have so much to learn. 8 weeks in the hospital to learn internal medicine is like only putting a band aid on something that needs stitches. We need more time on this rotation in my opinion. Its the basis of everything we do. Psych and OBGYN get 6 weeks and MEDICINE only gets 8? (sorry... I had to rant for a minute)
I have so many different stories I could tell you. I took care of so many... some who were young, some who were old, some who were joyful, some who were depressed, some who were hurting, some who were numb, some who were angry, some who were alone, some who were fighting, some who had given up, some who were waiting, some who wanted to stay, some who wanted to leave, some who knew it all, some who didn't want to know at all, some who knew what lied ahead, and some who didn't have answers.
I'll name a few scenes that will be stuck in my mind for a long time to come...
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I was involved in only one code blue the entire two months. It was the craziest thing I had ever seen. "CODE BLUE 3 NORTH, CODE BLUE 3 NORTH" came across the intercom, and it was a mad dash. Scrubs were pouring out of rooms and nurses stations in full sprint. I was sent to find the patient's chart ( this sounds easy, but at UMC they can be ANYWHERE!). When I came back to the room, there were 20 medical personnel standing outside the door. I made my way through the maze and finally got into the room and handed the chart to my resident. By this time, two huge men were giving chest compressions, switching out when the other got tired. They hooked up the heart monitor and were tracing the patients heart rhythm. Asystole (no electrical activity). They kept giving CPR. I was trying to recall the odds of code survival, I knew it wasn't good and this was the third time this patient had coded. I was honestly thinking to myself, "this is going to be the first dead patient I see." I was nervous. I didn't want to see that, not yet. I was holding my breath. Not two seconds after that thought crossed my mind... beep-beep-beep. Heart beat. A nurse found his pulse. All around the room there were sighs of relief and cheers. My resident got several pats on the back. As we wheeled the patient's bed out of the room towards the ICU, I saw the patient's spouse sitting in a chair outside the room with a blank stare. She looked so tired. My heart broke for her, I couldn't imagine what she felt like. Her husband's heart had stopped beating on 3 separate occasions. I'd be willing to bet her heart had stopped beating momentarily too.
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I'm going to call this guy Chuck. He was such a good ole boy. He was a Veteran. He had conspiracy theories and stories that you could listen to for days. He had jokes. He was jolly and upbeat. He also had terminal liver cancer. He was supposed to be getting chemo, but there was some abnormalities in his labs that needed to be corrected first. After several days of treatment, the labs weren't correcting. The oncologists went by and talked to him right before our morning rounds and told us that he had agreed to enter hospice care. When we knocked on the door and entered, Chuck and his wife were forehead to forehead... crying... They had to hear us come in, but neither dared to look away from each other. We quietly slipped out without saying a word. I was blinking back tears as we walked out. Chuck had decided to stop fighting. Chuck's wife loved him enough to let him.
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Bud (name change) was probably my favorite patient the entire time. He was such a funny old man. He had one of those hover-round wheel chairs that you see on the commercials and he was the type of guy that WOULD take it to the Grand Canyon. Bud was in the hospital for over 2 weeks. When he came in he was wheezing so loud that you could hear him breathing from the doorway. I could not hear his heartbeat with the stethoscope due to the congestion in his lungs. It sounded awful. We didn't know if Bud was going to make it for the first few days. One morning I went in to do my routine physical exam and check up. I asked Bud how he was, all he said was, "I wish you guys would catch whatever bug it is that you are chasing with those antibiotics." He told me he was having trouble sleeping because his wheezing was so loud. I got my stethoscope out, placed it on his chest. It was terrible. Diffuse expiratory wheezes. No improvement from the previous days. I was getting discouraged. He should've been doing better. While I was moving my stethoscope from the left to right lung, Bud started to cough. I pulled back to let him finish, and when he stopped coughing, his breathing was quiet. I put my stethoscope on his chest... clear. No wheezes. He looked at me and said, "Hallelujah, you done cured me!" I started laughing and my knee jerk response was, "Praise the Lord..." I didn't really cure him. He still had congestion in his lungs. But his breathing improved because the wheezing was gone. It wasn't me that did that. I do not have magical healing power in my stethoscope. But I do know the one who heals illnesses with only a spoken command, the touch of his garment, or by inducing a lung clearing cough.
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Since I learned so much about people these past two months... I thought it would be appropriate to put pictures of people on here.
Here are a few pictures I stole from my family off of facebook.
First: Madison by Blair Jones
Second: Hayden, the piano man by Blair Jones
Third: Madison and Hayden by Blair Jones
Fourth: A Man's Man by Nicole Cox
Fifth: Tough Game by Kyla Holcomb
Sixth: Seester!! by me
