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scalpels are sharp for a reason
One of my patients this month has been an amazing teacher. He hasn’t said a word yet, and I might be off the service before we get him off the vent and onto a trach that he can talk with, but I’ve...
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professional courtesy
I was fuming this evening, and the rest of the residents were tickled. They think it’s a joke, to see how much strong language I’ll use when I get upset. So far I only go in for colorful epithets;...
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denial
Surgery has no room for errors. If they happen, there’s nowhere to hide. You cut the wrong thing in the OR, and everybody knows about it. Even if it’s something as relatively simple as getting into the...
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luck of the draw
This is getting better. I got to do another bronchoscopy today, and actually saw something useful (instead of just getting the scope jammed inside the tube and not being able to move; while the...
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prejudice
A few hours into a busy morning – the kind that always develops when, building on a string of slow days, I have a stack of journal articles to read and paperwork to do – I got a nonsense consult....
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a good reminder
There’s a certain patient population that surgeons see too much of: a particular personality type among lonely middle-aged females, who tend to develop excruciating (to them, at least) abdominal pain,...
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taking off the training wheels
Call last weekend was one of the wildest days of my career to date, including some events that I’m literally not thinking about because, despite my predilection for seeing how close to the edge of a...
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motivation
It was an extremely busy day. I did not stop running the whole time, and really the only reason I can think of why nothing bad happened was that the ICU patients had the good sense to keep in order. If...
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not just in the books
I had a very puzzling experience last night. The arrest pager went off, and I happened to be just one floor above, so I got there a good deal faster than most of the rest of the response team, several...
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second chance
I admitted a patient from the ER one night over the holidays. The ER called with a CT scan showing diffuse pneumatosis, and the most obvious portal venous air I’ve seen so far. The patient himself...
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