Residency 1.2: Blue Team

Oh man, what a crazy month. My first inpatient month was on Blue Team = Cardiology kids and Cystic Fibrosis. It's so not as fun telling all the crazy stories when I have to explain all the medical jargon, so I apologize in advance that you may not understand everything.

And were there EVER crazy stories!

My first night was a 30 hour call, and despite not having a freaking CLUE about what I was doing or how to deal with a critically low potassium, I managed to get about 4 hours of sleep, and I thought, well this isn't so bad. Apparently, it was just an illusion. I think we did set some sort of record for number of transfers TO the PICU (supposed to be the other way around)--something like 12 or 15 for the month, including, get this, the same patient THREE TIMES! We literally just laughed the last time she came out to us, because the previous two times, she was on the floor less than 2 hours before she was back in SVT and back in the Unit. Our rounds were frequently interrupted by someone going into SVT (adenosine pushes can be fun!), someone developing a hemothorax from 3, count them THREE broken sternotomy wires (and the intensivists wondered why her breathing didn't improve with Lasix...cause you can't pee blood off), or someone whose heart just happens to pause for 6 seconds at a time on a regular basis. THAT was a fun EKG. And that's not counting the kid who came to the Pulm service from clinic on 15 L non-rebreather with sats in the 60s. Oh yeah, sounds like floor status to me!

Okay, enough medical jargon. I hope someone out there is reading this who understands all that and understands how ridiculous it all is.

Some more stories:

I had this really funny cystic fibrosis teenager who kept hiding her pancakes from us every time we came in cause she thought we were going to steal them. And another 8 year old post-heart-surgery girl who I told that she had to be eating and stooling normally before she left, so the next day when we walked in, she started singing "Eat and poop! Eat and poop!" It was hilarious. There were some frustrating cases, like the 23 year old end-stage cystic fibrosis girl that was too depressed to want to get better, and the kid whose mom disagreed with everything we said and thought we were intentionally hurting her daughter, like giving her Decadron that made her cross-eyed. Most days I laughed more than not, sometimes in disbelief at what was happening, but overall it was good.

In non-medical terms, I had 2 amazing senior residents watching my back and occasionally kicking my butt into gear; I eventually became comfortable making fairly minor decisions on my own; and I got really good at eating 2 breakfasts every day so that I wouldn't pass out on rounds.

And now, on to the Emergency Room, which terrifies me, but they say the kids on Blue are sicker than the kids in the ED, so I should be okay. See you in another month!