Comments (3)

By Dennis Hong, January 9, 2012 6:00 am

Do you remember learning about self-esteem in grade school? When they teach you to stand up for yourself in an assertive way? To speak up when someone doesn’t give you the respect that you deserve?

As it turns out, that’s only half the lesson. Because they certainly don’t teach you how to respond when someone gives you respect that you don’t deserve….

I went to happy hour with a friend one time. It was still early, so there was only one other customer sitting at the bar as we walked up. The bartender was deeply immersed in conversation with this guy, and as we waited for her to serve us, I couldn’t help but overhear their entire conversation.

Apparently, the bartender had gotten sick a few weeks ago and was worried that she had an ear infection. But, she didn’t have any medical insurance, so she didn’t know what to do. As the other guy nodded along sympathetically, I thought this was sort of a strange thing for a bartender to be telling a customer.

Maybe she knows him? Maybe they’re friends, and he’s just here to chill with her?

Finally, the bartender noticed me and sidled over. I ordered a round of drinks and handed her my credit card, telling her to keep the tab open. She glanced at it and then, somewhat unexpectedly, said this:

“Oh hey! Can I ask you a question?”

I furrowed my brows at her sudden eagerness.

“Umm… sure?”

“Okay, so I got sick a few weeks ago….”

And she carved a screeching u-turn right back into the story that she had just told the other customer. As I sat there, listening to her kvetch about her ear, I began to wonder if this bartender just had a case of oversharitis.

Continue reading 'It’s Okay, I’m A Doctor — It Says So Right Here On My…'»

Comments (18)

By Reena Mumbai, January 31, 2011 6:00 am

Image by Dreamstime.com

There are some things that even my poor memory holds onto tightly. The first time I had a patient “code” on me is one of those memories.

A “code,” in medical jargon, is the term for cardiac arrest, when the heart has stopped. The hospital’s overhead paging system will bellow “Code 99″ or “Code Blue,” and any available doctors and nurses must rush to help resuscitate. If nothing else, they make for great slow-motion montages on television medical dramas.

I was a first-year resident at St. Vincents Hospital in Chelsea, New York. About three months in, I was put on the Coronary Care Unit nightshift for five weeks. I loved the reverse hours–it’s when my tendency towards vampire hours began. The CCU is where the heart patients are. When you are on nights, there is a sign-out at the start of your shift. You get a list of about 30 patients from the daytime residents whose patients you are taking over for the duration of the night. Sometimes you get to sleep a full night, sometimes you don’t get to sit or eat for the entire 12-hour shift.

That night, I came in to a list of 20-some-odd patients. One was highlighted in yellow.

“Mr. ‘Davis’ has been having very low blood pressures all day and we don’t know why,” the outgoing intern said to me hurriedly. He clearly had places to go. Or maybe he didn’t, but I still understood the urgency. After spending all day caring for people whose illnesses never follow the medical textbook, playing medical detective, it takes all your restraint not to bolt out the door at the end of the day.

The night was a quiet one, until, at about 2:00 AM, Mr. Davis’s blood pressure dropped precipitously and I received a page from the night nurse. I ordered a CAT scan to check on a complication that he’d had earlier that day.

As we were wheeling him on the stretcher down to Radiology, I saw my senior resident. Something inside compelled me to blurt out, “I have a bad feeling he’s going to code.”

My resident assured me that he’d run down if there was any problem. Not the least assured, I proceeded to take Mr. Davis to Radiology.

During the scan, from behind the glass, I kept watching Mr. Davis’s heart rate monitor. Ever so surely, it began to drop, from 80 beats per minute to 60, then to 40. As the number crept lower and lower, my hand, shaking, picked up the phone and dialed the operator. “I need a code 99 in CAT scan….” Continue reading 'Death Of A Patient, A Father, A Husband'»