Week Three, Finis

Friday:

Week three is done--almost. I have one thing to do tomorrow and then the week is done. That is excluding homework, of course, none of which I've started for next week. I have a clinical "reflection" paper due on Sunday night. Monday I have a research paper due at 9:00 a.m. One of my classes isn't meeting next week, so I have two online assignments to do for that. And...I don't know what else. I don't care either.

I just got home from my clinical. It was an eventful day in the med ICU. My patient was a mess. "We can keep him alive pretty much indefinitely," was the answer when I asked about a prognosis. It's a teaching hospital; he's like a science fair project. He was on six IV medications--we had to unhook one to administer blood--then we hooked him back up. He had inactive TB, an antibiotic resistant strain of bacteria, hepatitis...and I'll just say that I hate the smell of old blood.

Mid-morning, I watched an emergency procedure being done on a patient in her room. About twelve people pushed into the room, crowding around to watch. Five or six more people stood outside, looking in through the glass. The whole thing had the feel of a tense, slow motion nightmare. The patient was fine. Her husband maybe less so.

That was all by 10:30 in the morning. (We get there at 6:20, get started at 7:00.) Time flies.

Late morning, I got trapped in a room by one patient's family member. She had some bad news yesterday--an operation then an infection that they ignored all the warning signs of until it went septic then a stroke, all in the space of a few days--and her way of processing it is to talk about it. I was in there for about fifteen minutes, listening--and trying to figure out a way to get out of it, too. We sent the chaplain in to talk with her and the conversation lasted two minutes. Here's the takeaway: Don't go to your acupuncturist when you have a fever and chills and a sore neck. Go to urgent care or to the hospital and get antibiotics.

In the afternoon, one of the students showed up to post-conference fighting back tears. It fell to her to shoot up a patient with morphine and other things and then extubate him. She had to leave before he died.

I came home, left my shoes and uniform on the patio, got into the shower and scrubbed off the MRSA and the TB and the hepatitis and changed into regular clothes. My brother and I ran a few errands and then I came home and rested for an hour. Dave and I had plans for dinner with Chris and Grace, so we went out again at 5:15. We had dim sum and sushi and sat and chatted until about 7:00 p.m. We're all exhausted. Dave from puppy-sitting. Grace from her new job. Chris because it's her first week of school. Me because the week I've had would fell anyone. But it was still fun to go and pig out in good company.

And that was Friday.