The highlight of my first day at work was taking my mother with me. I remember setting one ground rule, though, before allowing her to attend: if I was sent to join my medical unit, we shall place our farewells. She delivered me to one of the hectic wards in Adan hospital and waved me goodbye. This took me years back to kindergarten, where I was standing next to my mother, euphoric to start the school year. I recall how my mother would proudly display my artwork (one, in particular, that had my face glued ovar a physician's face that I found in a random magazine) on the refrigerator. She would spend hours helping me through my homework to get a good grade and made sure her efforts paid off. Whatever my mother invested in me, she wanted to see the fruits of her labor get into action.
My first medical rotation was Internal medicine. I chose it as my first because I was told it's many things—a cocktail of internal diseases and other bedside procedures like nasogastric intubation and urinary catheter insertion. Little did I know how tiring it really is, especially in this pandemic. Even though I haven't fully experienced working at the pandemic's opening, I partially felt the doctor-duty pressure anchored upon me (us the interns) before the vaccines were issued. Medicine was no joke. We had to deal with both wards, covid and non-covid. So imagine the patient-related paperwork, the precautionary covid swabs that must be done to all newly admitted patients (and some were resistant, I got hit by one), and other procedures that had to be arranged.
There were a lot of things involved and sadly less time to eat. I usually skip breakfast until the afternoon, where I stand hesitantly in front of an electric kettle, deciding whether I should go for tea or coffee. And that's it, that's practically my breakfast. I mean, what is breakfast anyway?
One of the many things I was hugely concerned about was on-calls. As an intern, we only took over ward calls which we were expected to confidently manage as doctors. It took me 2-3 on calls to finally get the hang of it. However, for or my first two on-calls, I had to shadow my fellow colleagues. I recall how busy those initial on-calls were because I had the chance to see all of it, the good and the bad. My first code blue was overwhelming. The room was crowded with the nurse staff, a senior doctor leading the code blue, three interns (including me), and two other adults who were the patient's sons. We did 10 cycles before the doctor made the call. The room turned quiet for a moment. I was standing in the corner, watching how everyone was eyeing the other, waiting for someone to speak up and break-up the bad news. It was only for a minute, but to me, it felt like time stretched to an hour. The odd part was that the two adults sitting behind us while the staff attempted to resuscitate the patient stood strangely calm, like they were waiting for their turn to come up in an OPD clinic. While everyone kept quiet, one of them finally spoke, "Did my father die?" Then a flood of mournful cries and tears surfaced after the doctor announced the patient's death, and I couldn't help myself but burst into silent tears.
I was shaken. The hardest part was not resuscitating the patient; it was the relatives' response through the code blue. Not sure what to center on, respectfully escorting the relative outside the room or initiating CPR. Anyways, doctor life is fun, fatiguing, but fun. It's like riding rollercoasters all day. You get elated but worn out by the end of the day.
*This post was initially inspired by @thestrivetofit