Room

It's been a while since I've gotten around to writing anything here. Honestly the past few months have been some of the more challenging months I've ever experienced and I didn't much have the energy or desire to write anything. I have a bunch of great stories from my month in the emergency department last month, but I think those are best served as stories told rather than shared on my blog (I have been dying to go to a coffee shop and just sit and have coffee, so if you want to hear them, then let's go!)

I just finished night float which was another hard month for me. The patient interaction, autonomy, and decision making has been great, but the schedule is just down right hard. Instead of sharing stories about the month I want to share something different. First just a little background, nightfloat is a month with 2 interns splitting the responsibilities and a supervising resident who oversees everything. We each admit 5 patients and cover half of all the resident teams' patients. One of us works from 4p-4a and the other 7p-7a. That means the times where there is only one of us, we are responsible for upwards of 70-80 patients. Typically the 4p-7p time is a little more slow and the same is true from about 3-5. That means I have managed to get some reading done which has been fun and takes me to what I wanted to share...

...Room is the latest book I just finished and it sparked a lot of thought for me. Without giving away too much about the book, it is a story about a young woman who was kidnapped and held in a small room. The story is actually told through her 5 year old son's (Jack's) perspective. Jack was born in the room and his whole entire world is that 11x11 foot room. The entire book has such amazingly tragic perspective and has really got me thinking. Jack knows nothing but what is in his room and what he sees on TV (which to him can't possibly be real). Jack's perspective got me thinking about our isolated world in the hospital. There are many parallels that I thought of while reading the book, but the most significant one for me comes from later in the book (at the risk of giving away too much, just don't keep reading if you don't want absolutely anything about this book given away). Jack and his Ma ultimately make it out of the room and Jack has to learn so much about the world he lives in and didn't have a clue about. He is so overwhelmed with the complexities of our world that he is completely unable to function. His mom is even unable to understand why he can't grasp it. Just as Jack has overwhelming amounts of information to process in this new world, so too do our patients who set foot into the hospital. For us health care workers it is often times difficult to understand why a patient or a family doesn't get why we have to wake them up at 3am to check their blood pressure. What does it mean to have tachypnea? Why can't a loved one drink more than a liter in a day and why are you measuring their pee? These oddities are a part of my every day life and it is easy to forget to explain them.  I have attempted to maintain an understanding about this throughout my training, but I think this book really helped me to grasp that and helped reaffirm at a time where things have become a little less exciting in the day to day and a little more redundant. The book was tragic, difficult to read at times, and amazing. I recommend it, but be warned it deals with some very difficult things.

Well that was fun, but I am getting tired and I have one more night left tonight. I really feel like I have grown a lot in the past few months and I hope to share more soon!

~vaya con dios