Indok’s Blog

Called it!

We had a patient who came in with acute psychosis = confused, crazy, thinking people were out to get her.  She said she had gone to a party and had a couple of drinks and didn’t entirely trust the men she was with.  Spiked drink??  We admitted her and the next day she had improved significantly but her renal function (creatinine) continued to worsen.  I thought it was rhambdomyolysis (breakdown of muscles).  But the staff said she didn’t have any big brusing.  I didn’t know if you had to have a big bruise to indicate the diagnosis, but she got transferred for acute dialysis cuz it worsened really quickly.   We ordered a CK that indicates whether there was muscle breakdown and it came back extremely high!  I called it!  Yay me!

 That same afternoon I was with my attending who got called down for a resuscitation … on an 8 mo child.  We rushed down to the room and it was craziness as we attempted to resuscitate the baby.  I picked up on the compression while my attending did the intubation and called the shots.  I used my thumbs to compress the chest - that’s how big the chest was.  I switched over with my resident to pump the oxygen bag.  As I was pumping the bag, I looked around me.  Craziness to my left as nurses and staff tried to get an IV line on this baby that was gone by now and on my right, a window that faced a playground with kids playing jumprope.  It’s true -the world does not stop for people dying.  We called the time of death after 20 - 30 mins later.

I was sad for about a 1-2 mins and then left the floor and went back to work cuz really - I didn’t know what else to do with myself.  Still… something I won’t forget.