Holy week!

[skillian]

Today I feel like a million bucks. I'm not entirely sure why. Partially is because I can compare it to how exhaused I felt yesterday. However, I today I was able to eat my full lunch at the lunch hour instead of at dinner for the first time all week. I got almost 8 hours of sleep because I wasn't on call and we had a late start morning by 30 mins. But more than that yesterday I was totally stressing about this lady with chemical burns to her face and eyes. Concerned about many things including even though they looked alright the night before that the alkiline chemical could have seeped from deeper tissue and still be doing damage. And that her care was being delayed by my busyness and the inaccessibility of supplies I needed to diagnose what was going on. I realized after I left work that this had been really weighing on me. And as always I realized my inability to fix broken eyes, heal blind and chemical burns. The reason this was even more apparent is that the patient claimed they could only see 2 feet and they had actually run into a wall while walking to the bathroom. So I let go of trying to fix the situation and brought it before someone who can. A few hours later I get a text from night call asking me to explain how the irrigation and pH testing worked and thresholds because the irrigation was back on. While I am answering that query, I get a page from the opthomologist. He says that she says she can see again and can see better than she could before this all happened! Also he states that there is no damage at all to her eyes. When I round on her in the morning, she confirms she indeed can see better than she could before. She was singing our praises and all I could say to her is that what happened was out of my control and in the Lords. She confirms this however still profoundly grateful. What's more the burns on her face look almost completely healed as well. That was indeed a humbling experience and indeed one that causes me to say "How great is our God!"

Second case that I also got to discharge today was a patient I had admitted a few days prior. He was slow, bradycardic and complaining of dizziness. Work up revealed the highest TSH I've ever seen at 218.4. We started him on low dose thyroid and his family said they could already see the difference. Praise the Lord times two!

Now off to mass for Holy Thursday!