The Intern Blues(122)

I got into a fight with a mother last night. It was the mother of my patient Moreno, the six-month-old with hydrocephalus. I was in the middle of doing my evening scut and one of the nurses told me that Mrs. Moreno wanted to talk to me. I told the nurse I was busy just then and I’d try to stop by later. It was a very busy night and I completely forgot to go back to find the mother, and about an hour and a half later the woman came up to me and said, “Didn’t the nurse tell you I wanted to talk to you?” I very nicely explained to her that I had a lot of work to do and I couldn’t talk just then. She then got nasty, accused me of neglecting her child because I didn’t think he was as important as the other babies, and said she was going to go right down to the patient advocate’s office to make a formal complaint against me. I felt so lousy and I was so fed up with everything that I just told her, “Go ahead! Go and complain! What can they do, fire me? Let them fire me! I’d be glad if they fired me!” And I went on like that for a while. The woman didn’t say another word, she just walked off the unit. I guess she went and complained. I haven’t heard anything about it, but I’m sure I will. The nurses told me not to worry, though, because since the baby’s been in the unit, she’s complained about four other doctors. Still, I don’t think I should have been so nasty to her. But what can I do?

Thursday, April 17, 1986

I don’t think I want to work in that unit anymore. Too many bad things have happened in that nursery. I don’t like taking care of those things. I just want to stay home with Sarah.

I had another death last night. That makes three on my time in three weeks. This last one was the worst of all of them because it was my four-month-old preemie, the one the nurses were really attached to. He had been doing poorly all along, and last night at about two o’clock, one of the nurses went in to check him and found him dead. Just like that. He was cold already. There wasn’t anything we could do for him at that point. The nurses were really upset about it; some of them cried. I’ve never seen a nurse cry before for a patient who had died. At least I didn’t have to go through the stress of talking to the mother, but spending the rest of the night with the nurses who were in a rotten mood might have been even worse.

Mrs. Moreno did complain about me to the patient advocate. I got called down there on Monday, and one of the administrators asked me to explain what happened. I told him the whole story and he told me that this woman was very angry about what had happened and what was happening to her baby, and she was blaming the entire staff for everything. He said it was a bad situation but they were trying to keep her calm and that for the rest of my time in the ICU I should try to be nice to her and put up with all her craziness. He didn’t fire me. I was hoping I was going to get fired or at least suspended for a week or two. No such luck.

There’s only one more week to go, so it looks like I’m going to make it through the month. I go to the OPD next, and that should be easier. And I think I’m starting to feel a little better. I didn’t feel like I had to vomit once all yesterday and today. So maybe this part of the pregnancy is coming to an end. I know that’ll make things easier.





Mark


APRIL 1986

Tuesday, April 15, 1986

Well, I’m back from another wonderful vacation. I don’t know what it is about me and vacations, but no matter how hard we try or how much in advance we plan, things always seem to turn out as if we were characters in one of those low-budget disaster movies.

This time Carole and I went to this beautiful hotel right on the beach in Cancún. It was a gorgeous place: great rooms, delicious food, and an amazing view. Everything would have been perfect, absolutely perfect, if two weeks ago hadn’t turned out to be Mexican monsoon season. I didn’t even know they had monsoons in Mexico, but I could have sworn that’s what it was. We got off the plane at the airport in the pouring rain, and the rain continued the entire time we were there! An entire week of looking out the window at rain falling on a beautiful beach. Very exciting! And of course this place didn’t have any indoor activities. Why should they have indoor activities? It never rains in Cancún, the weather’s always perfect, isn’t it? Sure it is, it’s always perfect, except, of course, when I go there on vacation!

Everyone I’ve met since I got back to the Bronx has mentioned what a nice tan I got. Nice tan? There’s no way I could have gotten a tan! There wasn’t enough sun to get tan, the sun never came out, not for the entire eight days we were there! The only way my skin could have turned color is if maybe I started to rust. That must be what it is, I went away on vacation and got a nice rust!