August ends with a whimper

As you may remember from my last post, August started with night float. Running like a mad woman around the hospital. Some of those nights truly tested my reserve. Between attendings scutting me to the point of near breaking (so they can get more shut-eye) and technological mishaps such as pager blackouts and electronic medical record crashes I survived by the skin of my teeth!

Mid-month, after a well deserved first weekend truly off in over 7 weeks, I changed gears and started my next rotation: ophthalmology, urology and ENT. Whoever thought eyes, ears, nose, throat and prostates were well lumped may have been a little nuts. But I can't complain. For the most part, I have had just about the whole of the last two weekends free and it's been wonderful.

One highlight of late was a totally awesome Seattle Storm game (Karin's iPhone pic at right at overtime!).

Another more recent highlight was a weekend in Rainier National Park with family and my super awesome girlfriend who put up with two distractable, hyperactive Eamans in a place without telephone, TV or Internet!

This photo at left is just a sampling of what an amazing place that park is! Walking through the clouds, wild flowers, clean air, blue skies, was pure joy.

But the same weekend I frolicked in the wild flowers something sad happened back in Michigan. My dog, Kiki, the sweetest beast on 4 legs, passed. She had battled cancer for years. My mother had treated her with this experimental "electric probe" device that supposedly cured her. I'm not sure that's true, but maybe it gave her a year or more of a decent good quality of life. Kiki was a red leopard Catahoula (or, so we think - she was a rescue dog). She probably weighed a good 50 lbs more than your average Catahoula and was a good two heads taller. She may have had more Dane or some other big breed in her but god knows she was the most devoted and lovable creature I've known. I'll miss her! The below video was before a leg surgery to repair her torn doggy-version ACL. She was particularly wobbly but so devoted she couldn't resist my mom's voice and had to get up for love at the sound of it!



Looking ahead
In a few days I head to New Orleans for the LGBA national conference. It coincides with an event I originally thought was a large LGBT event to help rejuvenate the city of New Orleans but on further research seems to be more of a gay-boy circuit party? Who knows - I'll know more once I get there. All I care about is that I get to play music with awesome people from around the US and Canada and explore New Orleans for the first time. The coincidence isn't lost on me that Catahoulas are the state dog of Louisiana. I'll be thinking of Kiki while I'm there, I'm sure.

See you in September!

The nightstalker

Nothing like showing up as the sun sets to a full bay of ambulances, their engines pumping diesel fumes, smokers sneaking puffs below the “This is a Smoke Free Campus!” sign, certifiably insane patients of mine yelling to their cell phones with central lines flopping around their necks. This is how my nights will start (although, admittedly, the insane patients of mine don't always greet me at the entrance). Then, about 12 hours later (plus or minus), I will drag myself back through the same ER doors, past that wet sound of people vomiting into blue condom-shaped emesis bags, past another line-up of rigs, not nearly as plentiful as the night before, sometimes EMS personnel joining the patients and families in creating that silver cloud of stank under those “no smoking” signs.

Such is the life of a night float resident.

I’m plodding through the night as I type most of this post. Admitting patients to Pediatrics, Internal Medicine and our own, beloved, family practice service which includes not only our bottomless barrel of sick TFM patients but additionally the Indian Health Service patients who happen choose Tacoma General over the multitude of neighboring hospitals and ER's. I cross-cover the same panels of patients and am the back up for the labor and delivery deck, in case things get a little crazy in their neck of the woods, too. It has the potential to be eerily quiet or insanely mad.

When not on the wards or in various ER's or delivery rooms I will camp out in our call room (me being insanely mad in the call room at left). This call room is located in the "M wing". The patients reside in L, K and J wings. The call room is flanked by volunteer services and the learning and development offices. Neither which are staffed after 5 PM. Thus, at night, the lights are off, the hallways are dark, and this part of the hospital feels completely abandoned, in a Stephen King kinda way.

One night in the winter, last time I was night float, I was walking back to the call room in the dead of night when out of the corner of my eye I spotted what I thought was a man down at the end of the dark hallway. The eyes play tricks on you that time of night so my first instinct was to ignore it. Then the man-shaped blob moved and I looked again. "Oh hi! You scared me!" Or some such generic statement miraculously came out instead of a yelp. He reported he was lost and looking for the elevator. How one would end up in the abandoned wing down a dead-end dark hallway looking for the elevators is beyond me. "They are over there," I pointed and discreetly entered the code to get into the room and closed the door behind me.

Not much later I get called to standby for a delivery on obstetrics. On my way down the yellowed stairwell of the M-wing I find the same man sleeping on a landing between stairs. I call security: "Does he have a red baseball hat on?" They ask. I recall that he did. "Thanks," they offer, "we have been looking all over for that guy!" I tell them his location and later find out they have evicted him from the building with the promise of arrest should he come back. I spend the rest of the night safely nestled in the bustle of a nurse's station.

But I digress. I wasn't talking about creepy night stalkers! I was talking about my current rotation: Night Float! Brought to you by the letter W! W: Withdrawal, the act or process of ceasing to use an addictive drug. Seems to be the flavor of the week for me and my adult admissions. And before I get called to admit another patient brought to TG by the letter W I will also present to you a superfast ubershort summary of July.

July 2009: Red, white, blue and burned out

Hold on tight, here we go.... July 1st I get the pleasure of starting on call. In the deep end from the start. On my first day a patient expires, my second day I get threatened with a lawsuit (by a crazy patient, go figure), and my third day we get 14 admissions. I get a day off on July 4th - march in a Parade, get this amazing photo taken (left) by the Adventure School photographers. Then back to work on the 5th for more insanity. Things persisted to be totally and inexplicably crazy until my "golden weekend" where I take a red eye flight and a train to Chicago and proceed to engage in a weekend long board meeting before coming back just in time to be on call the following day. By this time I am exhausted and worn out and amazed I'm still upright. Post call on the following Saturday I manage to stay awake well into the night, hell, into the next morning and finally crash after being awake for nearly 48 hours straight, a gig with my band at the Roller Derby and Bite of Seattle squeezed in for kicks. And did I mention my mom was visiting that weekend? Finally, I get a day off, it's spent perusing a farmer's market in the sun and before I know it I'm back at work and don't have a day off until August 1st - when I change rotations and now find myself immersed in the life nocturnal.

So there you have it. I won't even begin to go into the week-long heat wave with temperatures topping 104, the joy of having only one working elevator, the horror when that one decides to break, and how hot the stairwell can feel after 15 flights in 100 degree heat!

Ahead: another week of nights and then, holy crap, I have a full entire normal weekend off! The first real weekend off since the last weekend in June! Plans? I'm going camping and and plan to eat, nap, sleep and spend some QT with my cutie! (first photo is from my apartment window, of course)