Let It Be Spring and an ICU Story

EEK! I love this warm weather! I mean it is suppose to be spring and all. Given that, I was horrified when it was suppose to snow a few days ago. I’m not talking about a few flakes either. They were calling for 4-6 inches of snow! Are you kidding me?!! I feel as if the weather man was all like.. “I got their hopes all up because I said… and it’s officially spring and and…”

Well, weatherman, you are yet again wrong (thank goodness!), because it has actually been a pretty nice week here. Take that.

In fact, the plants seem to be more confident these past few days and really start to show off their greens and blooms. Just take a look at these trees!

I hate when everything starts blooming and then it decides to frost, or snow, and all the new plants are dead. :(. Therefore, I’m terrifed to look ahead at the forecast, particularly for this weekend. You see, it’s a big weekend for me in multiple ways.

1. YAY! It is Easter weekend! (My second favorite holiday)
2. YAY! It is my birthday weekend!
3. YAY! I get to see most of my family this weekend!
4. Not so yay. This is my last golden weekend for a while (sniff sniff 🙁 ) This means it is the last weekend for a while that I will have both Saturday AND Sunday off. Why?
5. Really not so yay. This is my last week of elective. I go back to the ICU starting next week. In which case it won’t matter what they weather is like for the next month because it’ll be dark when I get up and dark when I get home most likely. This is why I would love to enjoy a bit a spring before I go to the dark side.

Some people really like the ICU for various reasons that I cannot comprehend and therefore they must obviously be crazy. I, on the other hand, am not much of a fan. For one, I prefer to be able to communicate with my patients. Sadly, most people in the unit are on ventilators, are terribly sick and cannot talk to you, even though I try to talk to them. Sometimes this is frustrating, and sometimes you find you have to piece together what happened and you become a serious detective. Sometimes, I’m like:

Take my last visit to the ICU. My elective service was given a consult on a patient that had be admitted late the previous day. So, I go to the unit with my tools and proceed to find out as much as I can about the case. OK, so turns, very little is known. Let’s just say, somehow this patient was one minute sitting fine without any problems and the next time they were seen a few minutes later was in a position -that I had only imagined Superman would be able to pull off- unresponsive, not breathing, bruised and mad swollen. IN A MATTER OF MINUTES! I hear the story and I’m all like ‘Say whaaattt?!?!’

The answer? Nobody knows and the patient was still unconscious, so no help there. Sure this is frustrating, but honestly I’m just mind-boggled by the situation. Of course, my head goes: ‘right so this seemingly impossible thing has happened, but my attending is going to want to know how it happened.‘ So, after my exam I went to work on combing through the records- heck I even tried to find outpatient records (figures… with no success…the patient had none in the system)- to try and put together a story of how this might have happened that would fit all parameters in terms of exam, lab work and imaging. I came up with the only logical story in my mind of how something this ridiculous could have happened and presented the case to my attending.

The actual story I came up with was also pretty nutty, but it was the only thing that could make any sort of logical sense. My attending was like…”Yeahhh…but why would a patient do that?” Well gosh I have no idea, people do all sorts of illogical things that I have a hard time fathoming why they think would be a good idea.

So, anyway, here’s to looking towards hating my life all the craziness that comes with the ICU. Fingers crossed for no codes, people staying healthy, and patients that can talk to me! But, if that’s not then case then so be it 🙁 I’ll do what I need to to take care of my patients regardless, but one can always hope for the best!

For all you medical readers out there, if you have experienced the ICU, do you love it? Or prefer somewhere different? Any crazy stories out there?

Otherwise, how are you guys feeling about this weather? Did you get any of the predicted snow? Is it ok for me to look ahead for this weekend’s forecast? Would you rather it be spring, or still be winter?