ICU

P! Soooo, I just finished my ICU rotation. Busy, working 80 hours per week. Good learning experience. With ventilator and cardiovascular management, it will apply more for anesthesia than most of my other rotations.

Most interesting case of the month was probaby a 35 year old woman with 2 kids that came in with shortness of breath. She ended up needing intubation for acute respiratory distress syndrome. We never found the inciting factor, maybe a virus since she had a viral illness the week before. And she never recovered. She was flown to Cleavland Clinic on the ventilator to see if they could figure out what was up. Mostly likely she had an abnormal response to a usual virus. But it makes you think. What if it was a superpathogenic virus, like avian flu. We didn't take any special precautions to prevent spread. I could've died. And this young mom was suddenly taken over by a mysterious illness. There is so much we still don't know.

I've just started my new rotation doing inpatient medicine, and I'm waiting for my attending to come in so we can round on the patients. I got here too early I guess. This will be another busy month, with overnight call every fourth night. These calls make your work hours add up quick. With 2 calls in one week, there's 60 hours of work! And this call is busy. I've been averaging about 2-3 hours of sleep for each call, and I'm lucky. I consider myself a white cloud, because some of the other black cloud interns are getting hit hard. I wish they had a night float system. But it's all good. I'm enjoying this more than medical school. At least more than 3rd year of medical school. 1st and 2nd year were nice with very flexible hours. 4th year had 8 or so weeks of vacation. But being the doctor now making descisions, it's pretty exhilirating. All said, I can't wait to move on to anesthesiology!