The Intern Blues(19)
She was really good. She let me get that baby’s death out of my system. She told me I could go take a shower and have some breakfast. That was nice of her, but I didn’t do it because I knew if I left the NICU, I’d get horribly behind in my work, and I knew that once that happened, I’d never get out of there.
After she talked with me, Laura had to go deal with the parents. She told the mother what had happened, and the woman started wailing. I turned around and saw Laura walk out of the unit. She had this expression on her face; I could tell she was really upset. She put her hand over her mouth; she was fighting off tears. For a second or two she looked really different, she almost looked like a little girl. And then she began to regain her composure and her face returned to normal. I listened to the mother’s wailing for a while, but then I had to get back to work.
A little while later, I had to go back into the room where the baby died to draw blood from another patient, and there was Laura with the parents looking at the poor little dead baby, all swaddled and wrapped up. All day, I felt really down. Any time I’d think about it, I felt bad . . . really bad.
During the day, I was completely drained. The night had been such an emotionally exhausting experience for me, I was completely wiped out. It was so bad, any time I sat down, I’d start to fall asleep. Laura gave a really good lecture on physiology that I wanted to hear, but I just kept falling asleep. It was embarrassing; at one point, in front of everybody, she said to me, “You can go to sleep if you want, Andy.” I wanted to pay attention, but I just couldn’t.
Laura’s the most amazing attending I’ve met here. She’s tough, but I think she really cares. I think she loves her work and she wants everything to work well, so she’s willing to put in the effort to make everything work on all levels. It’s really exceptional, having someone around like that. I’m lucky to have her as my attending.
I got out of there around seven. I was too tired to do anything. I went out and got some food and ate dinner. By seven-thirty, I was ready to go to sleep. Karen called at about ten. We spoke for over an hour. I kept telling her how much I missed her. We didn’t want to get off the phone; we kept thinking of something else to talk about. It’s really hard being away from her this long. It’s another four weeks until we get to spend any real time together again.
So anyway, the NICU is a very strange place. It’s very exciting, physiology in medicine brought to its highest application. But when you think about it, it’s also a very sad place because there’s life and death involved; you take these little babies, most of whom would have been dead ten years ago, and there they are, just sort of cruising along. I think the best workers for a place like the NICU would be robots, or people who can blot out all their emotions and just do the work that has to be done.
The technical work you do in the NICU is pretty straightforward; once you’ve had some experience, you get very good at it. But the technical stuff is really the easiest part of the job. It’s the decision-making that’s the hard part. Almost every day in there, we’re called on to decide whether to keep a baby alive or to let him or her die. I don’t have any of the tools necessary to make those kinds of decisions. I don’t have any experience with preemies, I don’t know which babies might have a reasonable chance of surviving and which babies don’t. All I can do is what somebody else tells me.
A lot of these babies don’t even look human. They’re really fetuses. Take poor baby Cortes, for instance; she weighed about a pound and a half at birth. I don’t know, it doesn’t seem to me like we’re doing anyone any favors by working so hard to keep a baby like that going. We’re just delaying the time when the parents’ll have to mourn their baby’s death.
Saturday, August 3, 1985, 8:00 P.M.
I thought I’d make a little list here, not necessarily in order of importance:
What’s Right with My Life
1. I’m in an excellent training program and basically enjoying my work, despite the fact that I complain a lot.
2. When I’m at work, where I spend most of my waking hours, I’m with people who, for the most part, I like, some of whom I’m becoming friendly with, people like Ellen O’Hara and Ron Furman.
3. In my nonwaking hours, I’m in an apartment that I basically like. It’s not great, but it’s sufficient, and I tend to sleep pretty well because I’m not overly anxious, even though I have lots of reason to be.
4. When I’m not working, I have some old friends around whom I get to see.
5. New York City is a great place to live with tons to do, and I’m taking a lot of advantage of being here. I went down to Manhattan today, my only day off for the next two weeks. Oh, well.