Bah Humbug

I whole-heartedly agree w/Ashley's post. My roommate has left for the holidays, and I have no family around with which to celebrate. I am drained after working 90 hrs/week for the last month and not having a day off in 10 days. This is added to:

-Being called at 5pm last Friday night at home by the psychiatry resident who was consulting on one of our nonverbal patients with anoxic brain injury after a cyanide ingestion. For several days, they had said that my patient did not have capacity for medical decision-making, so we had made him DNR/DNI (do not resuscitate/intubate) per his power of attorney/POA. Now, they tell me that they had brought in a typewriter to communicate w/the patient and decided after all that he DID have capacity, and furthermore, wanted to be full code. So, annoyingly, I drove back into the hospital at night to have a 2-hour-long painstaking code discussion w/the patient using a computer keyboard so he could peck out his answers on the keyboard with a pen. Wearing, of course, our yellow paper gowns because he was in contact isolation. This reminded Julie of the Scrubs episode (or was it House?) where the pt communicated by blinking his eyes. And after all that, psychiatry was wrong, and the pt still wanted to be DNR/DNI. SIGH.

-2 bomb threats to my continuity clinic last Friday, of course called in by a resident clinic patient.

-Soon after capping at 12 new patients within a few hours this past Saturday at the University Hospital, my resident informs me that a 737 has crashed at DIA and get ready to go down to the ER to help. Plus, he was worried because his father was flying Continental to Houston that afternoon (found out later he had flown out a few hours before the crash). Fortunately, most patients were ortho/ER patients due to fractures, not medicine patients.

-Continuity clinic today, in which 2/3 of my patients were seeking narcotic refills.

This makes me nostalgic for old times, too...I miss Wisconsin and Nebraska!