Im thankful...

*Editor's note: I started this on Wed and am just now getting around to publishing it. (Sunday)

That Wed. is over. The work day anyway. The week seems so long to get threw until Wed. passes and then it's smooth sailin'! I work late on Wed. nights and close the office, so it just DRRRAAAAAGGGGGS. Then Thurs. I'm only there half day. So that's a piece of cake and then Friday is here and Friday afternoons almost always go very smoothly and they are quiet because we only have 1 provider on Friday afternoons. nice.

I don't spend a lot of time talking much about work on here, mostly because when I leave there. I try to LEAVE everything that belongs there... there. Sometimes bad stuff happens, people die, awful disease, cancer, illness... etc. Other times it's incredible how great things turn out and how awesome it is to see someone do well or make it successfully through a terrible illness... etc. Most of the time I think most people in the field try to stay pretty neutral, or numb. I don't like the word numb it seems rather insensitive, but much of it becomes very routine or the upsetting things you just move past.

I do have a point to all this... Today was "one of those days". It was bad... it was just... scary.

A guy who I didn't know came in to the front desk. I just happened to be up there and overheard him talking to the receptionist. He was visibly shaking. I assume off the top of my head maybe panic attack. We worked him into Dr. R's schedule and the girls got his info ready and all that stuff. I went to call back my next patient and as I walked out into the waiting room and I get a better look at him. I decided to take him back first because it became very obvious to me that he was ILL.

I get him in a room and ask him whats going on. He said that he has a sore throat, and is really cold, and shaky and just doesn't feel well. I'm assuming by this point this man has been sick for days. He looks cyanotic (blue) but he isn't having any difficulty breathing. His respiration's were normal and so was his heart rate. His blood pressure was elevated but not alarmingly high. His temp was 101.7 . He was a man roughly 6'2" maybe 260lbs. I'm guessing. That's a pretty high temp for someone that big and at his age (roughly later 60's). Dr. R walks by and I ask him to come in. He also notes the patients skin color is blue and looks at his throat and check his heart and lungs really quickly. He and I are sure at this point that the guy is septic (this is when an infection in the body enters the bloodstream, can be pretty serious if not treated aggressively and quickly). Dr. R tells me to take the guy downstairs in our building to the lab and get blood cultures drawn on him. (This will tell Dr. R if he is in fact septic). I get him down there and I stay right with him. He continues to shake and tells me that his fingertips seem numb. hmmm... I'm stumped now. Get him back to the chair to draw his lab work. While this is going on he proceeds to pass out. Not terribly surprising. I knew he wasn't feeling well and he was trying so hard not to shake to get the labs drawn quickly and safely. Well he goes out completely for maybe a minute and smelling salts bring him back. This happens not only once but twice.

The super scary part to this for me was that because he was shaking so much and kept passing out I was SURE he was going to have a seizure. I ran to the phone and called upstairs for Dr. R to come down immediately. He came down, everything by this point was stable. Dr. R told me later that he was sure he was going to come into a full blown seizure when I called for him.

All these terrible scenes rolled through my mind. I was fearful that I was going to be without a physician and he would 1)seize, 2)have a stroke, 3) have a heart attack. I had no idea where the crash cart was in the lab down there and just did not like any of these scenarios!

So to keep to my point here, I have decided that there are a few things in medicine that I just CANNOT deal with. Or rather, really really do NOT like. I can't stand sputum (aka mucous) and I don't like to watch people have seizures. Something about the fact that I cannot help them in any way and I just have to wait it out gives me a sense of hopelessness that I just have a super hard time with.

So again, I am finishing this on Sunday and I am feeling much better about the whole thing now, but when I originally started this post it was rather fresh in my mind and it was NO FUN.

Update: the patient was admitted to the hospital and last time I heard, he was doing MUCH better. Just a really sick man at the time.