Resuscitated

I decided to shadow one of the interns on Friday. I have been nervous about starting residency and I figured I should take advantage of the fact that I am already in the system and just spend a day in the life to get over my fear of the unknown.

My day started at 4:30am. A year ago, I'd be falling asleep around then. Now... FML.
But in all my pre-dawn jitters, I woke up fairly easily. I got ready, and left the house.

I saw two inebriated stragglers from the night before on their way to a home with a  bed.
I waited patiently for the subway (5:03am is the scheduled stop) which runs few and far between at that hour and doesn't switch to rush hour frequency until 6am.
When I re-emerged above ground, it was still dark out.
None of the vendors had set up shop yet, no newspapers, no bagels, no coffee.

Rounds started at  5:30am. There were 3 pages of patients, and where most hospitals I had  worked on before split up the patients, here, the interns were responsible for knowing everything on everyone. Pro: You have everyone watching your back. Con: That's a lot of f-kin information. Then they proceeded to see the patients, place orders and do other floor tasks..

There were only 2 intern-level cases for the day, both minor procedures, and I got to go in one of them. I should have picked the other.... it was a large woman (and by large, she had a BMI of 90... that translates to roughly 500 lbs..) with a peri-anal abscess... I will spare you the details of that hour of my life...

There were consults, there were transfers, there were discharges...

I started getting the hang of it all about 8 hours in... or what should have been a full shift at any other job... but then I realized that it was only lunch time..

The rest of the day was pretty mundane and uneventful (which for surgery is great news... no one wants an 'event' on their shift)... and around 6pm, when we were getting ready to check up on the patients again before signing off to the night team, we got a page...

'28 year old young man in ER with lower GI bleed'
Normally, this is a non-emergent page.. a little bit of BRBPR (bright red blood per rectum), or maybe some dark colored stool.. or maybe he's spitting up some blood from an angry ulcer...
We get down there, and it was like I was in the middle of a trauma. Blood everywhere. The fellow coded and was resuscitated. There were bags and bags and bags of blood being transfused back in... All I could do was watch.

The team quickly assessed the situation, made a few calls, and got the patient into the OR. Within 10 minutes, the drapes were up, the doctors were scrubbed in, and the patient was opened up. Within another 15 minutes, they found the bleeding artery, closed it up and suddenly... the patient stabilized. The beeps on the monitor evened out, his blood pressure rose, his heart beat slowed and the tension in the room lifted.

His wife who was lead away in the ER, eyes red from shock and tears, fearful that she would lose her husband to a tragic twist of fate, would soon get to hear the good news of a second chance.

And as I watched the surgeons close him back up, and listened to their joking banter, and stories of their day, I realized that this was the field that I was meant to be in. All the anxiety and self-doubt that I harbored melted away into certainty. I could tolerate waking up at obscene hours, and spending the majority of my waking hours engaged in mundane activities, knowing that when that critical moment came that required precision, skill and speed... I would one day be able to save a life. And it would make it all worthwhile.

This was their job. This was their life.
This will be my life...

...and it starts in 40 days.