Health-Care Team

For whatever reason, all my patients tonight were extraordinarily ill.  Intubation after intubation, respiratory emergency after respiratory emergency, significant chest pains, intestinal blockages, internal bleeding, traumas, ingestions, you name it- we were swamped.

Mr. Cat-eyes, one of my regular drunks who is here at least 3x a week was a critical patient today.  Because he was unresponsive (and still drunk), we pumped his stomach and fed him activated charcoal through that same oral-gastric tube.  Activated charcoal is pretty gross. It got all over my gloves, then on my bare hand when I removed the gloves. It's thick, sludgy, and tastes terrible, so I hear, except for one girl who took the pediatric cherry-flavored charcoal and said it tasted like cookies.  He was sweating profusely (diaphoretically) so I wiped his familiar face several times with a towel.  He wasn't clean- streaks of yellow exudate covered my towel.  The respiratory therapist was a nice young man.  He actually wiped a spot I had missed on the other side of Mr. Cat-eyes' face.  When Mr. Cat-eyes went upstairs, I couldn't help but wonder what had made him this way today. :(

In the other room, a nice old gentleman had come in for difficulty breathing.  Throughout the day, his eyes were half-closed, but he was fully aware and answered questions appropriately.  It reminded me of when animals are sick. They don't vocalize, but lie there, panting and staring through half-closed, glassy eyes.  I felt so bad for him and made it a point to go to his room often to shut off the constantly ringing alarm on his monitor. Both his heart rate and breathing rate were extraordinarily high.  The same respiratory tberapist from before came to find me because my LOM asked said to him "I feel so tired, but I wonder if I fall asleep if I'll ever wake up again." He made me promise to check on him often, which I was doing already. It really touched me to know that someone else was caring for patients. Not "caring" in the cold, clinical sense, but caring in the way that you move a lock of hair from somebody's face, or tuck a blanket around someone's bare neck.  This therapist even did something that I normally do; he came back when he was about to go home, to check on this LOM once more, to reassure him that he was in good hands, and that we were going to take care of him.  I think that my faith in humanity jumped a few points today.

I did my own mitzvah today after seeing the respiratory therapist with my LOM. An older man had come in for syncope.  Apparently, he had been fasting all day for Yom Kippur and fainted dead away after a glass of wine.  He and his wife were lovely people and very grateful for my detailed attentions to them despite the craziness of 2 intubations in the rooms around them and several patients down the hallway screaming from PCP use.  It was worth the extra effort to me. They were kind people- you can tell from the way their bright eyes crinkled when they smiled. After I changed out of my scrubs, I stopped in to see them one last time and wish them luck. Luck would have it that they were being discharged at that very moment and as my final work-related action of the night, I removed his IV and sent the pair of them out into the warm autumn night.  Work felt good tonight... Can't wait for 12 hours of trauma drama-rama tomorrow!

S