Dear Friends,
I just wanted to thank you so much for your thoughts of me on my birthday! My room-mate apparently spread the word that I was in a “bad mood” – like when am I not in a moody state?
Anyway….
I got SLAMMED with consults at work on Friday. SLAMMED! No, I don’t think that having had a relatively easy week is any consolation. I started the week with a golden weekend. That means I didn’t have to go to work on either Saturday nor Sunday! What blessing, true! Unfortunately, I spent much of it in bed or on the couch with that aura of heat that emanates from you when your head is a fog, your throat scratchy, and your nose unable to retain its contents! And then I had to present a case of “an interesting patient” to a room full of ID attendings (the senior doctors) who are ready to tear the case apart and offer criticism of the management decisions. Okay, I exaggerate a bit. Infectious disease case conferences are no where as brutal as surgical morbidity and mortality rounds. Yikes!
So you can understand my state of mind when I sauntered home late Friday night still having to write-up many consult notes. I swear medical and surgical teams have no respect for the Infectious Diseases (ID) consult team. You know you don’t know what antibiotic you are going to send a patient home on after you’ve started every major-gun antibiotic possible “just in case” so now why are you calling ID when the patient is better, which why wouldn’t they be anyway since you just killed every sort of bacteria they could have – good AND bad. And now the patient is being discharged RIGHT THIS SECOND. Am I in my swanky office having crumpets and tea twiddling my thumbs just waiting for your call so I can rush to get YOUR patient out? Yes, it’s Friday and it’s Super Bowl XLII weekend and the patient feels better and wants to go home, but you know what, on Monday, you knew Super Bowl weekend was coming up, and you could have at least had the courtesy to call me earlier in the week, so that by today you would already have a home regimen of antibiotics to put your patient on!!!
But enough of my rant! That goes to explain my state of mind Friday night. Not in the mood! Not feeling my upcoming birthday on which I had to work. Not feeling another round of rash consults and dumb curbside questions from interns. Not feeling missing a career fair. I have to think of the future since one more year and I’m out of here. Not feeling missing a concert to raise funds for the current crisis in Kenya; a concert with performers I know including Les Nubians, a concert I know half of the African students and professionals in Boston would attend. So you see. I was just not feeling it.
But I went to work on Saturday, my birthday, and I swear for the first time my birthday felt like nothing special. Am I old already? Is this why when growing up I would rush to wish Happy Birthday to my mom or my dad and they would grunt like they didn’t know and didn’t care? I wanted balloons, I wanted a fanfare, I wanted smiles and recognition but no! It was the same old.
*Beep * beep *beep. The pager goes off. Hello, this is the ID fellow. Uh huh. Yes?! He was admitted on December 31st? Uh huh. Mental reminder that we are now in February. He’s had his abdomen opened up because he was in a motor-cycle accident. Okay! He also fractured several bones and they’ve now all been repaired with hardware in place. Okay? He has had fevers for the past two weeks. Uh-huh? But the cultures are negative. I see. Oh, but you have him on vancomycin, Zosyn, and Flagyl. Yes, I’m still on the line. So you want me to see the patient today?! Today, Saturday? So, what happened today versus a week ago, hell, versus two weeks ago since that’s how long your patient has been on antibiotics? Why today?! Fevers for two weeks right? Oh I see, you want Imipenem do you?! Imipenem is an antibiotic that is restricted to infectious disease physicians. In my mind, a second track of thought is forming – it’s my birthday damn you – why can’t you be nice to me!! A whole month of medical records to review to decide if a patient should get imipenem or not. Argh! Of course, none of this is said out loud. I’m my usual quiet person.
But Saturday at work was amazingly quiet considering. The medical and surgical resident teams must have gotten all their patients out on Friday, and even the doctors and nurses were in minimal numbers. Of course that meant that into each patient’s room I went – each patient NOT too sick to know where they were or what time it was (Superbowl Time), I was the first doctor they were seeing, and they were pissed as hell for “not having enough pain medications”, “still being in the hospital”, and “not knowing what the diagnosis is”.
But these are not the questions I’m here to discuss as the infectious disease fellow. “Why is it taking so long for my doctor to come”, they continued, “I’ve had the nurse page them again and again”, “I’m not sleeping well because of the ****ing bells and the constant parade of people in the room” etc etc. Eh!
So I would leave each room with a scowl after trying to uphold my honour and defer their concerns to the appropriate doctor – the primary team! Some patients are just too mean! Don’t they know doctors have feelings too? Don’t they know it’s my birthday?! Why can’t they be nice?
Let’s not even talk about the families who have been away all week, working I presume, coming in now to sneak a couple of hours of visitation before rushing off to their super-important Super Bowl XLII preparations, expecting me to give then a run-down of their parent’s two-week hospital course to date. I think not. I’m treating the infection so I will update you from A to Z on that. I can have the nurse page the primary doctor for everything else! You’ve already tried that route? Sorry!
But I made it through the day and got home to all your kind words and thoughts on Facebook and it lifted my spirits up to the heavens. Enough to give me courage to attend the Benefit Concert with my beeper in hand just in case the bloodsuckers still needed to reach the ID fellow. After all I am on call. It was the greatest decision ever. I had a really good time. The pager only went off a couple of times and the questions were simple enough to answer without feeling like I had to end my night early to rush home to reference Sanford Guide. It may as well have been my birthday concert and my birthday after-party. Yes, I know. How grandiose of me. How almost blasphemic! But still!
And now I’m off for the whole day today, yippie! I plan to watch Ghana kick major Nigerian behinds in the Africa Cup of Nations football quarter-finals then enjoy the celebrations when the New England Patriots pummel the New York Giants in the SuperBowl. For the record, I don’t care at all for American football, but it’s the home team!
So now February is going to be just G-R-E-A-T!!!!!!
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