The Intern Blues(22)

So here it is, eight twenty-five on my good night, my one night out of three that I’m not either on call or postcall and I have nothing to do and I have to go to sleep in an hour, so I can get a good night’s rest before I’m on call tomorrow. I hate this! I think I’d really like the NICU if I weren’t so tired, but I’m tired all the time. And you just don’t get any normal human contact in your free time unless you’re married or living with somebody. Even though I’ve made a couple of friends, they’re all interns and they’re either on call or tired. I really should be doing some reading about neonatology tonight, but screw it! I’ve got to get out of here!

Friday, August 9, 1985

I have a pretty nice white cloud right now [white cloud: good luck on call; black cloud: bad luck on call]. I still have only three patients. One’s just a grower [a preemie who has no medical problems except that he weighs less than two kilograms, the necessary weight for discharge from the NICU], and the others are pretty easy also. Poor Dina, the junior resident, she’s got five patients, three of whom are pretty sick, two of whom are really sick, both with NEC [necrotizing enterocolitis, a serious disorder of the intestinal tract]. I offered to take one of them but she didn’t want to give them up, I guess. I’m on tomorrow, so I know I’ll be picking up a sick kid who was born this afternoon, and I heard there’s another preemie on the way, so I’ll have at least two new ones to pick up. That’ll fill out my service to five. Not exactly a piece of cake, but still pretty easy.

Boy, was I dumb on rounds today! Laura asked me a simple question about how much glucose I was giving one of my kids. Shit! I couldn’t remember how to calculate it; everyone was standing there staring at me. I felt like an idiot. Later on I finally figured it out. Rounds are generally good, Laura’s a great teacher, and except for when I’m making a dope of myself, I really enjoy it. Well, I’ve got to stop now, Ron’s here, and we’re going out to dinner.

Thursday, August 15, 1985

Being cooped up inside the NICU, you miss things and you don’t even know it. I was riding down to Manhattan in the train this evening, you know, there’s always something to look at, there’s always guys coming through, telling you their life stories, begging for money, never fails. Walking around Manhattan on the way to the theater, I was just looking at all the people. They were all well-dressed, there were some very pretty women, something I almost never get to see in the Bronx. I realized that after only two weeks, I already missed the excitement that exists in Manhattan.

Today I got a call from Nelly Kahn, one of the social workers who works in the outpatient clinic. She told me she thinks I should report one of my clinic patients to the BCW. It was a mother who told me that she beats her kids with a strap when they act up. Ann Covington was right there, so I talked it over with her and she thought I should, too. So I had to call the mother and tell her I was reporting them. It really surprised me, she took it pretty well. Maybe it was like Nelly said, maybe letting us know she hit the kids was like her cry for help. I’ll never figure these mothers out.

Then I called up the BCW, and they put me on hold for about twenty-five minutes! Twenty-five minutes, and I finally only got to speak to someone for five minutes. I was kind of surprised, the worker seemed really nice and friendly. I thought they’d be boring bureaucrats. All they wanted to know about was whether there were marks on the child. I told them there were and that we’d taken Polaroids of them. They said that was enough, they were going to start an investigation.

Sunday, August 18, 1985, 2:00 A.M.

I’ve been in the NICU every day now for two weeks solid (having been on call last Saturday) and I finally have a whole day off. The sick thing is, I’m thinking I should go in today for about an hour because there’s a workup I didn’t quite finish. It wasn’t really clear that I was supposed to be taking this one patient. It was one of those situations, I thought the resident was picking the patient up, then it turned out she wasn’t . . . I don’t know. So I may actually go in for an hour, just to finish that up, then I’ll split before anybody catches me there and asks me to do something else.

It looked like Friday night was going to be really easy. All my notes were written early, and I was ready. It looked like I was going to get to bed by two in the morning, then things got complicated and then, around four o’clock, the deliveries started. Shit! Then it was just one delivery after the next. What do they do, wait until four in the morning to have all the deliveries? It’s always like that! So the bottom line is I didn’t get any sleep.