Residency 2.9: PICU

It's hard for me for to sit down and write a blog post about my month in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit for a couple of reasons. I'm so delirious with relief from being done, and with the gorgeous day outside and the nagging of all the things that didn't get done last month, it's hard for me to sit still at all. It's also hard to sum up so many experiences into one blog post. And for now, I almost want to just say, "it's over" and leave it all behind. But that wouldn't be fair to my two readers, so, for you, I will sum up the last month.

For those of you who aren't in health care, I don't know if there are ways to describe what a 26-bed ICU is like. Besides the NICU, which for some reason is very different, my only real experience with an ICU was in medical school at the VA--a 10-bed unit that often wasn't even full, and that was managed by the general teams instead of intensivists (so that tells you how "intensive" it really was). So to be frank, a busy day in our PICU was a rude awakening. I would LOVE for someone to just follow us around for a day and see the craziness. Where nobody bats an eye when rounds are interrupted by having to do chest compressions on a kid whose trach fell out. Or to walk in in the morning and see one of the rooms converted into an OR so that the surgeons can "explore the chest" of one of the post-op heart kids who's having too much bleeding. Yeah, that's totally normal. I could go on and on. Oh the stories!

Somehow in the midst of this environment, I did manage to learn a lot, to grow more confident in my decision-making, and to become (very slightly) more comfortable with really sick kids. I also had the opportunity to be a part of some very difficult end-of-life situations, which, while I wouldn't seek them out and I don't always enjoy, reveal God's hand in so many ways. There are some things that just won't ever make sense unless through the eyes of faith. It was really a good place for me to be during Lent--over-worked, under-rested, totally stressed out, but at the end of the day, my suffering didn't compare to the parent watching their child slip away.

So yeah, it was an intense, intense month. And I'm super glad to be done. And to have a life again, especially with spring being here (Hazzah!). Looking forward to Easter and sunshine and sleeping in and PORTLAND!

Hasta for now!