Tonight I'm headed out to our celebratory end-of-Green-Team dinner. We're a few days early, and it might not be so much of a celebration as a decompression, but I'm definitely looking forward to it. Green Team is one of our general pediatrics inpatient teams, but it's senior-only, which means just me and another senior and the attending. No interns, no medical students, no pre-rounding. Just seeing patients and making the plans. It's a LOT of work, especially since there were just 2 of us.
It was a real challenge to be the person in charge and making the plan for the day, deciding when someone is ready to go home, or whether another test should be run, and then being the one to explain it all to the patients and parents. For example, how do you decide how much work up to do on a 16 year old that you're pretty sure is new-onset schizophrenia, but you can't rule out a rare autoimmune disease, especially when he won't wake up from his catatonic state enough to answer any questions and has to spend 24/7 in restraints? And how do you explain things to a grandma who believes he has a demon inside him? Yeah, that one was interesting.
I was super grateful that I had an amazing co-senior on with me. We got along famously, worked hard and well together, and had a lot of laughs. Even though I'm ending the month a little burned out, I can't imagine how much worse it could have been.
I go next month to the PICU, which I'm scared for but I know I'll learn a lot. Please pray for me. Also, feel free to send me care packages, love notes, pep talk voice mails, etc. I'll see you on the other side.
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