So Thursday was my first day at St. Joseph's Emergency Department. I was really nervous but once I met my preceptor I was immediately put at ease.
She's an amazing doctor and treats patients with an incredible amount of respect. She's also really smart and within my first shift my head was swimming with all the new stuff I had learned.
The strange thing about working in emergency is that people look at you and expect you to be some sort of god, that you can fix them completely with a touch of your hand. There's a look in these patients' eyes that isn't there in patients in family medicine and not even in oncology. There's a different kind of distress with these patients and they completely rely on you...it's a very eerie feeling.
The hardest part of my day was a little 5 month old baby that came in with RSV and was very short of breath. She was having a hard time breathing but was alert...then she quickly became unalert and it was obvious she was getting tired. They were going to intubate her. Then she's frothing at the mouth a bit, they can't find a vein ANYWHERE to put an IV in and so they start trying to screw into her 5 month old tibia (calf bone) to try to put medication into her that way. So then the IV nurse is coming, there's doctors and nurses everywhere, the pediatrician on-call, and a number of anastesia residents. They finally stabilized this little baby after over an hour with her. And the hard part for me was that she looked a lot like Frackson's baby Christina who died. Those poor parents - to see their baby go through that. I was ready to shake someone in emerg when my angel niece had a febrile seizure.
There were lots of other heart-breaking cases too. Two girls who had mental health issues and were seriously contemplating suicide in an emerg lock-down psychiatric facility that looked worse than a prison, and so so so many other cases. And then people I had seen at 8 in the morning were still there needing reassessment at 3 in the afternoon. It's ridiculous and chaotic - and I loved it. Emergency medicine is a serious option for me. Once I get past the confidence-crushing feeling that I know absolutely nothing :)