Drifting
I think I literally spend most of my hours at the hospital, dividing my time between the three general pediatrics floors. The 4th floor is for infants, the 5th for toddlers and school-age kids, and the 6th for adolescents. My nights on call (which are every fourth night) are spent prioritizing my sick patients. Should I interrupt admitting this baby with possible shaken baby syndrome to go and check out the leukemic who's spiking a fever? Probably. And en route I get paged to assess a toddler with respiratory difficulty, and I stand motionless because I truly don't know where to go.
Today I went from having a mother of a child like me ("I love your skirt, doctor") to having a mother who absolutely loathes me. We had to tell her that the imaging of her child's head indicated trauma - we just can't tell when (or who) it's from.
And yesterday, when an attending snarled at me, I held back tears. All I could think about though, was how much work I do on her behalf, and how much she gets paid for it. When I walked to my car after work, I couldn't stop these pathetic sobs, and I sat there in my car, in the parking lot, in the stifling heat, furiously telling myself to *stop it*. And I did.
Residency. There must be an easier way to make a living?
Today I went from having a mother of a child like me ("I love your skirt, doctor") to having a mother who absolutely loathes me. We had to tell her that the imaging of her child's head indicated trauma - we just can't tell when (or who) it's from.
And yesterday, when an attending snarled at me, I held back tears. All I could think about though, was how much work I do on her behalf, and how much she gets paid for it. When I walked to my car after work, I couldn't stop these pathetic sobs, and I sat there in my car, in the parking lot, in the stifling heat, furiously telling myself to *stop it*. And I did.
Residency. There must be an easier way to make a living?