The Intern Blues(40)

He’s also not very good technically. He couldn’t start any of the IVs I’ve had trouble with and he can’t get blood on kids after I’ve failed. So if he can’t teach and he can’t help, what good is he?

It’s very upsetting having this guy in charge, but what can I do about it? So far what I’ve done is just ignore him. If I need help, I either ask Susannah, the other intern on our ward, or if she can’t help, I go to the chief residents. The chiefs seem to understand our problem; they always come and help if we need it.

It’s good to be working with Susannah. We were classmates at Schweitzer. She’s got a ten-month-old daughter at home, so our motivation is pretty much the same: We both try to get out as early as possible. On days when I’m on call, I tell her to sign out to me as early as possible, and when she’s on, I sign out to her as early as I can. Having this moron as our resident is mostly just a pain in the neck for Susannah and me. I feel bad for David, our subintern, and the medical students. They don’t know how little they can trust Barry, and they might just believe some of the things he says. What this means is that Susannah and I are going to have to do some extra teaching this month to undo the damage caused by our resident.

I was on call Saturday, and it was quiet. I spent most of the day sitting in the residents’ room watching TV. I got only one admission, in the afternoon, but we just about had to drag the patient up to the ward. It was a six-week-old who came to the ER with a history of a fever, a cough, and an eye discharge. The baby had been seen in some other ER the day before and was sent home, if you can believe that! Even I know that anyone under two months of age with a fever gets admitted to the hospital for IV antibiotics. But this bozo at the other hospital actually told the mother the baby was fine, he just had a little cold, and she should take him home. She brought him to Jonas Bronck the next day because he still had the fever. When the guys down in our ER heard it was a FIB [fever in baby] they pounced on him, did a complete workup, and got ready to admit him.

I wound up getting a few hours of sleep in the on-call room. The place is really disgusting; it’s a tiny room at the end of 8 East with nothing in it except two sets of bunk beds and a telephone. Usually they don’t provide pillows or blankets, so you have to steal linens from the clean-laundry cart, and you can do that only if the nurses like you or if they’re not looking. They know me, so there wasn’t any trouble. So life’s not bad. At least so far.

Sunday, September 8, 1985

This is the end of another terrific weekend. We spent yesterday and today with my father in New Jersey. Because of the way the schedule worked out, I had Sunday and Labor Day off last week and this whole weekend off. I feel like a banker, not an intern. And I’ve actually had a chance to spend quality time with Sarah without the sitter being around.

Marie and I are getting along fairly well. We’re not exactly best friends, but I think we at least understand each other. I guess I’ve come to accept some of her mishegoss [Yiddish for craziness], and she’s come to accept some of mine. I was concerned for a while that Sarah would come to think of Marie as her mother and me as someone else who happened to spend a lot of time around the house, but it’s clear she knows who I am and who Marie is. Sarah’s doing a lot of things now, rolling over front to back and back to front. She doesn’t lie still for a second; we can’t leave her alone on the bed anymore or she might roll off onto the floor. Then I’d have to take her to the ER for head trauma and they’d probably report me to the BCW.

I did bring Sarah to work with me last Wednesday. She had an appointment with Alan Cozza, and since his office is right off the ward, I figured we could get it in before work rounds. Alan told me Sarah’s doing fine. She weighed over fourteen pounds. She’s nearly doubled her birth weight in four months! And she got her second DPT [diphtheria, pertussis, and tetanus immunization] and OPV [oral polio vaccine]. I had to leave the room when Alan stuck her. It definitely hurt me more than it hurt her. Now I can understand how the parents feel when we stick their kids. Sarah cried for about twenty minutes after he finished. And that’s after pretreatment with Tylenol!

Anyway, before rounds started, I sat in the residents’ room with Sarah on my lap, and all the other interns and residents came over and oohed and aahed over her. A lot of them didn’t even know I had a baby. It’s so strange! Here are people I work with every day, I even sleep in the same room with them every third night, and they don’t even know I have a baby! Of course, I don’t know what’s happening in their lives either. But this job tends to do that to you, it brings you into intimate contact with people who remain total strangers.