So Dark...

Today I discharged 4 of my patients... and one of them was a 'terminal discharge'

What an awful way to say your patient died.

It makes it sound like they've gone to the train station or something.

Yes, Mr Blah didn't make it throough the weekend. Apparently his wound started oozing heaps of stuff (it wasn't his potassium!) and his poor health just couldn't cope with it all. This is the first patient with whom I've had ongoing care whose died on me. And although I shouldn't, I start playing the 'What If?" game...

What if I had checked his potassium earlier and given him supplements early?

What if he hadn't come out of ICU so quickly?

What if he hadn't had the operation at all?

In the end I know it's not my fault, but somehow I feel like we lost... we tried to beat death and this time death won.

And to make it worse, today we were finally dicharging one of our patients who has been in for a record 75 days. After multiple pulmonary emboli and bleeding diathesise he was ready to go home on light anticoagulation (INR 1.9) We had his meds ready, his transport booked and his bags packed. He was waiting for his ride to take him out of hospital when he started peeing blood everywhere.

Not a good sign!

Apparently even sub-therapeutic blood thinning didn't agree with this guy and so now he's bleeding away and we gotta keep him in whilst we try to work out how to get the right balance with his blood to prevent clots but ensure he doesnt bleed out on us.

He decided to do all this to us just as I was about to go home at 4:55pm. And then another patient decided to as lots of questions I couldn't answer about his condition (I'm an intern, not a specialist!) and before I knew it the nurses were asking me to sort out all these other problems.

Now I usually dont mind staying back a little bit... but it really annoys me when I work really hard all day so I can get out on time and then like clockwork all my patients crash late afternoon and make me stay back late... I really hate this job! At leats in a paperpushing job you can get your work done early and go home early... not so in the Zoo

Working tomorrow night which means a 17 hour day at the Zoo and then another 7am start the day after.

I think work is making me depressed. I wake up feeling sick just thinking about the day ahead. I find myself doing anything I can to get away as soon as possible.

Surely there's gotta be more to life than this? This is not the way things should be!

Sigh!