Q4 24+3

Phobias and pet peeves

I am currently taking care of a woman who weighs over 400 pounds. This has made me discover some things about myself...I have a phobia of morbidly obese people. Is there a term for this? I attempted to google it, but no luck. Now, let's get this straight, it's only morbidly obese, not fat or chubby or well-rounded. Only the kind where you lay in your own filth because you can't get yourself out of bed. If there is no term for this, I'll take suggestions.

Tonight, I am pre-call. That means that starting at 6am tomorrow, I will be up until Noon the following day taking care of patients. Now, in general, I am a pretty pleasant person. However, when you spend your night answering inane phone calls from nurses wanting you to order Tylenol for someone for a headache at 4am and then the nurse realizes she paged the wrong doctor, you learn to quickly become the miserable intern you have every right to be. There has not been one call night this month where I have been able to rest my eyes for more than 15 minutes. My pager continuously goes off because of these ridiculous calls. I don't know if you have ever experienced this, but one of the worst feelings you can experience in life is that of trying to fall asleep and continuously being woken up. Yet, I go through this every 4th night.

When it is just a Tylenol order or Ambien order, I give a huff and just give them an order over the telephone. Things could be worse. The worst things to get called about in the middle of the night:

1. chest pain-automatically requires me to get up, examine the patient, do an EKG (and interpret it) and send off stat blood work.
2. shortness of breath-also requires me to go see the patient, listen to their lungs, order a chest x-ray and then follow up on the chest x ray, possibly give meds
3. patient passed away (patient was comfort care/do not resuscitate)- requires me to do an exam to confirm death, call time of death, call family and inform them, call the attending doctor overnight, call patient relations, fill out death certificate, make sure patient gets moved to morgue
4. arrest stat- you try fumbling back into your shoes, white coat and grab your stethoscope and then make decisions about how to bring back a patient from the brink of death
5. "I want to sign out AMA (against medical advice)"- I had someone do this at 4:00am! Come on people, at least get a good night's sleep before leaving the hospital and taking the risk of you dying into your own hands.

Ok, that's enough cynicism for one night. I just had to vent. Now I can breathe a little easier.

Posted by susana at April 20, 2005 10:50 PM