Weblog » Archives » May 2007

  • A case worthy of Dr. House

    Calling all diagnosticians: a mysteryThe 13-month-old boy previously mentioned in anDrew's Journal -- the one for whom we consulted Dermatology and Pathology on a Saturday morning, the one who arrived in the PICU…

  • Gathering of surgeons

    Having had spent the entirety of Friday night in the hospital desperately hoping my coding patient wouldn't die, I quickly signed out to the intern on call Saturday and rushed out of the hospital. It was 6:30 a.m. I need…

  • Pre-syncope

    I got a call one night from the pediatric intensive care unit when I was on burn surgery."We just got a kid transferred from Kaiser, status post code, intubated, on Levo, has some sort of weird skin sloughing, is wrapped…

  • Calling in the reinforcements

    Consulting a dermatologist for an inpatient is bizarre enough (especially for burn surgeons, who operate on diseased skin and little else). Calling in a dermatologist on an early weekend morning for an ICU patient is nea…

  • Dermatologist

    (This is dedicated to my med school roommate who is now a budding dermatologist.)Like a breath of rose-sweetened air, she waltzed into the intensive care unit. Her raven hair flowed gorgeously down her back. Her bespecta…

  • Hometown driving

    I was somewhat surprised to note that my little po'dunk cow-town of a city was listed amongst some of the biggest and baddest in the annual ranking of American road rage. In fact, Sacramento is listed as having meaner dr…

  • Cheap housing

    It's not that my apartment is bad, per se. It is small -- a sub-300 sq. ft. studio. It does have its occasional cockroaches and dripping faucets. The hardwood floor leans slightly to the left. There's no Internet access.…

  • Gone fishing (code the finale)

    [A voicemail from a fellow intern during my day off]Hey, I was just calling to let you know that the baby finally died...uh, around 5 o'clock. Um...yeah...so, anyways...I hope your day spent fishing was fun. It's getting…

  • Code the third

    Being elated that the baby survived the night, I started working on my obligatory post-call scutwork. The little girl continued to do well for most of that morning until right about lunchtime, when the respiratory therap…

  • Code the interlude

    The night was solemn. I was the only physician in-house at the Shriners hospital. The ICU was fairly quiet, save the baseline buzz and wheeze in the four-month-old girl's room. Her blood pressure and pulse were pleasantl…

  • Code the second

    The baby girl's trachea was torn to shreds thanks to weeks of ridiculously high ventilator settings and several days of steroids. She was taken emergently to the OR the afternoon I was on-call for tracheal repair (and li…

  • Nodding off

    I was post-call, tucked away in the corner of the small conference room. One of the surgery fellows was summarizing Tables A, B, C1 and C2 of some thoracic journal article in his usual, boring, monotone voice. I nodded o…

  • Code the first

    The four-month-old girl (the one with an open abdomen, no legs, no fingers, and 100% graft loss) decided to poop. As the nurses cleaned her up, she brady'd down and lost her blood pressure.I was across the street at the …

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