Call 5

Connected

Well, that's it I guess.  The honeymoon is over, and I'm a resident again.  At least it feels like it.  Call was brutal.  Pretty much everyone in the hospital was my patient.  Stayed up all night wandering bleary-eyed around the nursing station and dashing into rooms for sudden fetal bradycardia after epidurals and such.  Reminded pregnant people not to use cocaine anymore.  Got yelled at by obstetrician on call.  Yep, exactly like when I was a resident, except none of my resident buddies were also suffering in the hospital with me.  Couldn't just escape to the medicine call room or find any disgusting low-fat cheese to eat.  Didn't have the Dragon or associates to run my thoughts by on the preterm IUGR with low AFI and h/o stillbirth.  In a word, it was... lonely.

I like the nurses.  While I was shooting myself for not having long-enough fingers to do an adequate cervical exam on a lady who was contracting with 2 previous c-sections, K was self-flagellating for allowing the same patient to eat 3 bites of a sandwich.  We sat at the triage station together and stared blankly at the repetitive variable decelerations of another patient I was inducing (and slowly, they went away).

Then I ran up and down the stairs several times to the ER to evaluate a couple of kids, and admit one.

By 1am I could almost take a nap.  I got ready to send a triage patient home, a woman at 23 weeks with round ligament pain.  Then I found out she had had 2 previous 2nd trimester fetal losses.  She had no contractions, and her cervix wasn't changing, but she was visibly shaking.  She wanted this baby so badly, and she was terrified she would lose it.  I decided to run a fetal fibronectin, and I laid down for 30 minutes.  It came back negative, which means there is almost no chance she'll deliver in the next 2 weeks.  It felt good to be able to tell her that.  She went home.

Immediately after, it was time to deliver another first baby, who decided to enter the world with the umbilical cord wrapped tightly twice around his neck.  He had a rough time for about 30 minutes, so I was keeping an eye on him while sewing up a bleeding perineal laceration.  The nurses calmly helped him out, and adjusted my light.

As we finished with that baby, the patient with preterm/IUGR/grand multip/no prenatal care/cocaine combo returned, this time in labor with light meconium in the fluid.  I called the pediatrician on call to stand by.  That baby delivered, and it was an absolutely beautiful delivery.  It really was.  And she was a beautiful girl, who came out yelling and transitioned just fine.  She had the longest eyelashes I've ever seen on a 4-pounder. 

Next I let the lady with the previous c/s go home, as her contractions had stopped and she'd had some rest.  The day team was arriving, and I signed out to the next doc. 

As I left the floor, K was back, starting her shift and signing out with the night nurses.  I overheard her asking about the patients we'd seen together.  How they were, if they'd delivered, if they'd been able to go home.  And I realized, that's what we all have in common.  That's what keeps us coming in to work every day.  It doesn't matter how crazy it is, or what a wreck our lives are, or if it's 2 am, we're all just looking to connect with other people.  Even for a minute, or a few hours.  Each of those connections changes our life in some minute way.  I know every time I leave the hospital after a call I've been changed by those connections.  I smiled to myself.  And I felt a little less alone.