Today the patient on my list who was doing the best took a drastic turn. This morning he told me that he just wants to live one more day because tomorrow is his 90th birthday. It seemed like most of my day was spent protecting him from decisions being made by people with more authority than me.
I am not the wisest of interns, but I do know that when you start tinkering around with labs and fluids too much, your patient can easily end up suffering as a consequence. This seems to be particularly true for the elderly. Also, I didn't like the way my senior resident had interpreted my patient's chest x-ray this morning. Luckily, I was able to offer some alternative studies that took so long to come back from the lab that by then the specialists we had consulted had seen him. My stall tactics worked as they agreed with me that he was not in heart failure. My patient narrowly avoided receiving an unnecessary medication that could have pushed him over the edge. Whew. I just hope that he's doing better tomorrow. We are running out of antibiotics to fight his pneumonia.
After work, I participated in an act of gluttony by dining at a restaurant I cannot afford with several of my coworkers. The dinner was hosted by a pharmaceutical company and their guest speaker was speaking about pneumonia of all things. I didn't really come away with much from his lecture, and their medication is not one that we have been using over at my current hospital, but it was fun to chit-chat with my friends on someone else's dime.
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I am always looking for new arrangements of words to use to get my idea across. I figure this quote is good for replacing the saying, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." Since the last verse I posted was well-received, here's another obscure quote for you:
"As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his folly." --Proverbs 27:11I am not the wisest of interns, but I do know that when you start tinkering around with labs and fluids too much, your patient can easily end up suffering as a consequence. This seems to be particularly true for the elderly. Also, I didn't like the way my senior resident had interpreted my patient's chest x-ray this morning. Luckily, I was able to offer some alternative studies that took so long to come back from the lab that by then the specialists we had consulted had seen him. My stall tactics worked as they agreed with me that he was not in heart failure. My patient narrowly avoided receiving an unnecessary medication that could have pushed him over the edge. Whew. I just hope that he's doing better tomorrow. We are running out of antibiotics to fight his pneumonia.
After work, I participated in an act of gluttony by dining at a restaurant I cannot afford with several of my coworkers. The dinner was hosted by a pharmaceutical company and their guest speaker was speaking about pneumonia of all things. I didn't really come away with much from his lecture, and their medication is not one that we have been using over at my current hospital, but it was fun to chit-chat with my friends on someone else's dime.
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I am always looking for new arrangements of words to use to get my idea across. I figure this quote is good for replacing the saying, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." Since the last verse I posted was well-received, here's another obscure quote for you:
This is not exactly a Bible verse you'll ever find cross-stitched and hanging on someone's wall, but poignant just the same. And yes, I haven't gotten too far in my reading since my last post.
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2 comments:
I now have a brilliant idea for your Christmas present. One hint: it involves cross-stitching.
RYC: this from the person who regales me with stories of lancing and oozing and other niceties associated with treating liquidy ailments.
You find the best Bible verses. I can only imagine what you could do with the Koran.
You always impress me with your advocacy of your patients, especially elderly ones.
When my mother was an oncology certified nurse at Mayo, some rep took them all (like 50 people) to Ruth's Chris Steakhouse. Can you imagine that bill?
Chris
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