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Authors: Robert Marion
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change her mind. Finally I just gave up. So after figuring out 6A, I had to move over to a completely different ward in a completely different hospital, pick up a whole new group of patients, learn where the Mount Scopus labs are and where the forms are kept, and I have to meet a whole new group of nurses and probably go through another night of IVs falling out. Terrific!
Childrenâs isnât so bad, though. First of all, Elizabeth is there this month [Elizabeth Hunter, one of the other interns, went to medical school with Mark], and itâs nice to be together with her. And the other intern, Peter Carson, seems like a nice guy. And everybody tells me that Childrenâs is much easier than 6A. I can see that that may be true: I was on last night and actually got three hours of sleep. Three hours of sleep! It was the first time Iâve even seen an on-call room since I got here. There are fewer admissions, and the patients arenât as sick. The chiefs have promised me that theyâll still give me the month of Childrenâs Iâm scheduled for later in the year, so maybe this will work out well. I doubt it, though; in internship, nothing is supposed to work out well.
I spoke with Carole a little while ago and told her I missed her. I think she was surprised to hear me say that. Iâm not what youâd call the most demonstrative person around, but I really do miss her. I miss everybody! All Iâve done since starting this internship is work or go home and fall asleep. I donât know if itâs possible to survive a year like this.
Iâm going to sleep now. Maybe Iâll dream that itâs next June and all this is finished.
Thursday, July 11, 1985
Yesterday was my third night on call on Childrenâs. When I was on last Thursday and Sunday, I didnât have any trouble. I didnât get a single admission, and I slept three or four hours each night. I was thinking maybe Iâd try to arrange to go to Childrenâs for my vacation this year. So I wasnât at all prepared for what happened last night.
I got five admissions. There was one every hour or two. Iâd just have time to finish working up one when the next one would show up. They werenât really very sick: an eight-year-old who came in to have a repair done on his cleft lip that had originally been repaired when he had been a baby; a kid who had developed an infection in his leg after he had been bitten by a dog and needed IV antibiotics; another kid who had periorbital cellulitis [an infection of the tissue surrounding the eye; dangerous because it can lead to infection of the eye itself and, occasionally, of the brain] and who needed IV antibiotics; and an asthmatic. The sickest kid was also the most interesting; it was a four-year-old with a weekâs worth of facial swelling.
He had kind of an interesting story: His mother noticed the swelling around July 1 and brought him to their local doctor. The LMD [local M.D.] sounds like he graduated from a medical correspondence school. He brilliantly decided the kid was allergic to trees and started him on Benadryl [an antihistamine used to reverse effects of allergic reactions] . The mother was back at the guyâs office in two days: Not only didnât the Benadryl work, it also seemed to make the swelling worse. Now not only was the kidâs face swollen, but also his hands and feet were puffy. The LMD told the mother that sometimes it takes a while for the allergy to get better, especially since there are so many trees around, and that she should give the medicine more time to work.
Well, she gave the medicine as long as it took for the kidâs belly and scrotum to get swollen and then she brought him to our ER, where one of the residents made the diagnosis in less than a minute. The kid, of course, had nephrotic syndrome. [This is a disorder in which the urine contains large amounts of protein and, as a result, the body becomes protein
Childrenâs isnât so bad, though. First of all, Elizabeth is there this month [Elizabeth Hunter, one of the other interns, went to medical school with Mark], and itâs nice to be together with her. And the other intern, Peter Carson, seems like a nice guy. And everybody tells me that Childrenâs is much easier than 6A. I can see that that may be true: I was on last night and actually got three hours of sleep. Three hours of sleep! It was the first time Iâve even seen an on-call room since I got here. There are fewer admissions, and the patients arenât as sick. The chiefs have promised me that theyâll still give me the month of Childrenâs Iâm scheduled for later in the year, so maybe this will work out well. I doubt it, though; in internship, nothing is supposed to work out well.
I spoke with Carole a little while ago and told her I missed her. I think she was surprised to hear me say that. Iâm not what youâd call the most demonstrative person around, but I really do miss her. I miss everybody! All Iâve done since starting this internship is work or go home and fall asleep. I donât know if itâs possible to survive a year like this.
Iâm going to sleep now. Maybe Iâll dream that itâs next June and all this is finished.
Thursday, July 11, 1985
Yesterday was my third night on call on Childrenâs. When I was on last Thursday and Sunday, I didnât have any trouble. I didnât get a single admission, and I slept three or four hours each night. I was thinking maybe Iâd try to arrange to go to Childrenâs for my vacation this year. So I wasnât at all prepared for what happened last night.
I got five admissions. There was one every hour or two. Iâd just have time to finish working up one when the next one would show up. They werenât really very sick: an eight-year-old who came in to have a repair done on his cleft lip that had originally been repaired when he had been a baby; a kid who had developed an infection in his leg after he had been bitten by a dog and needed IV antibiotics; another kid who had periorbital cellulitis [an infection of the tissue surrounding the eye; dangerous because it can lead to infection of the eye itself and, occasionally, of the brain] and who needed IV antibiotics; and an asthmatic. The sickest kid was also the most interesting; it was a four-year-old with a weekâs worth of facial swelling.
He had kind of an interesting story: His mother noticed the swelling around July 1 and brought him to their local doctor. The LMD [local M.D.] sounds like he graduated from a medical correspondence school. He brilliantly decided the kid was allergic to trees and started him on Benadryl [an antihistamine used to reverse effects of allergic reactions] . The mother was back at the guyâs office in two days: Not only didnât the Benadryl work, it also seemed to make the swelling worse. Now not only was the kidâs face swollen, but also his hands and feet were puffy. The LMD told the mother that sometimes it takes a while for the allergy to get better, especially since there are so many trees around, and that she should give the medicine more time to work.
Well, she gave the medicine as long as it took for the kidâs belly and scrotum to get swollen and then she brought him to our ER, where one of the residents made the diagnosis in less than a minute. The kid, of course, had nephrotic syndrome. [This is a disorder in which the urine contains large amounts of protein and, as a result, the body becomes protein
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