intern year

 It's been almost a month since I started intern year, and I'm not entirely sure if I'm still a human or if any of this is real life anymore. Everyone told me residency is hard, and the hours are horrible and they were correct. But no one prepared me for days that feel like a sheer shitshow, the emotional turmoil, the myriad of ways you can mess up, and how your entire life almost HAS to revolve around the hospital. No one prepared me for all the non-medicine things that take up most of your day. No one prepared me for the 8 emergencies that will all happen simultaneously on hour 16. No one prepared me for the several hours of arguing with a respiratory therapist to make sure my patient doesn't code on her way down to a CT scan.

And yet, I genuinely love it. There was a moment earlier this month on floors, when someone was putting out waaaaaay too much urine while also slightly overcorrecting for hyponatremia and I just messaged the fellow and asked if i can start D5 asap

and the renal fellow is like yes of course, thank you yes please do that. and my attending and my senior were like, hell yeah good on you for catching that lets goo

It feels good to have reflexive responses to labs now, reflexive urges to check a VBG, or get a CXR before giving someone more fluids

I genuinely do love it, but only when I have some semblance of my place in this hospital

I just came off nights and I feel like I left summer camp. The ten of us, interns from like all over the country who'd never known each other, all in this workroom that smells ever so subtly of feet and urine
just in it together
And now I cannot imagine NOT knowing them, these brilliant, hilarious, absolutely loveable humans

I will miss them so much, it breaks my heart to think that my next nights block won't be with this exact group of people. I love them so much

I will miss Daniella's stories about her Irish lover, and Sahil pacing the room, spending more energy awaiting an admission that hasn't come, than the rest of us with admissions lol. I will miss texting sahil to "HELP ME PLEASE" just to order standing insulin or fill out an MRI questionnaire

I will miss hearing about the nurses flirting with Jack and Zack (I wonder if they actually just had a crush on just one of them but got their names mixed up), and sweet sweet Pallavi telling us about her 17th emergency that night in the calmest possible voice. I will miss the renal fellow. I will miss the sunsets from the roof, and watching the anesthesia prelims practice blood draws on a random saline drip they taped to a desk. I will miss everyone roasting me for not knowing how sunrises and sunsets work. I will also miss everyone roasting me for complaining about having no admissions in the beginning of the rotation and then getting slammed at the end. I will miss post-signout breakfast together in the courtyard. I will miss hiding from them in the 5W workroom and then reemerging when I'm in need of love.

I love them. We had brunch this morning, and someone asked us to go around and name our favorite memory and I gotta say, I genuinely HATE questions like this  

Because how do I express to you with "one favorite memory", that I love you for making me feel home in a place that I have barely known for a month

how do I tell you, in this crowded diner, that I don't have a favorite memory because my brain hasn't gotten around to accepting that this is over yet

There was a moment earlier last week when I nurse messaged me that one of my patients was struggling to sleep. His vital signs were stable, everything otherwise on paper was non-emergent. But it was a pretty quiet moment on my list otherwise, so I went down to see him. He's recently been diagnosed with an aggressive metastatic cancer, and it sounded like he was struggling with anxiety-induced globus sensation--which is this weird phenomenon of feeling like your throat is gonna close up

"I'm just scared that I'm going to go to sleep now and not wake up, and no one will be here" he told me, with tears streaming down his face

I held his hand and told him that we have him on fancy monitors, that the nurses are constantly checking on him, that his vital signs are so stable right now, that he's protecting his airway
that if anything were to happen, we'd be right there at bedside; that we'd call his fiance right away

 "I know I sound stupid for feeling this way. But I'm so scared. I don't want to die yet."

and in that moment, I wanted to cut open my chest, take my heart out, wrap it in a blanket and give it to him to hold while he slept

no one prepared me for that