The Intern Blues(78)

Sunday, December 15, 1985

I haven’t recorded anything in a while. I’ve been going through a very difficult time. I think I’m finally out of my depression, though. I don’t know why that happened. Nothing’s changed; I’m not spending any more time with my family, the work on the ward is just about the same, but for some reason I’m feeling a little better.

Maybe one thing that made me feel a little better is that I finally made a decision about next year. I went to see Mike Miller again last week and told him I had decided to stay. He seemed relieved to hear it and then he said some nice things to me. He told me he had been very upset after our conversation the day I broke down in his office and that he was glad I had decided to stay because he thought I’d make a good resident. I don’t know whether he meant it or not, especially after what he told me about that meeting the faculty had last month, but it still was a nice thing for him to say. It made me feel good to hear it.

Sarah stood up by herself for the first time yesterday. I was on call, of course, so I didn’t get to see it, but Larry called me at work to tell me. He said he and Sarah had been sitting on the floor of the living room and at one point she just climbed up the edge of the couch and stood there. She isn’t even nine months old yet! She’s done everything early; she sat at five months, so I’m not surprised she stood by herself so young. She’s like a miracle; it’s absolutely amazing just to be around her and watch as she grows and develops. I’ve been so worried, but she seems to be a normal, well-adjusted little girl. Maybe she’s better off with me at work; maybe Marie is doing a better job with her than I would have.

Things at work are about the same. Angela is getting worse; we started her on chemotherapy about a week ago, but it isn’t doing any good. She had a seizure last week. We brought her out of it with IV Valium and Dilantin [an anticonvulsant medication], but the seizure wasn’t a good sign. She had a repeat CT scan a few hours after the seizure and it showed the tumor was larger than it had been before the biopsy. Right after the seizure, her mother, who’s been at her bedside ever since Angela got here, told me for the first time that she thought Angela was going to die. Angela’s going to start radiation therapy next week. Maybe that’ll help; everyone doubts it, though. I hope they’re wrong.

Sunday, December 22, 1985

Tomorrow’s my last night on Children’s. After that I go into the nursery at Jonas Bronck. I’m not looking forward to that. Nursery’s the one rotation I’m really frightened of. My month on Children’s wasn’t all that bad. It would have been great had I not gotten so depressed in the middle of it. Children’s is a good place; most of the patients are pretty healthy and almost everyone gets well without much work from us. Angela isn’t getting better, though, and we’re all getting depressed about that. I guess we’ve all come to accept the fact that she’s going to die sometime soon. I just hope she holds out till Wednesday. I’d really rather not have her die on my time.





Mark


DECEMBER 1985

Tuesday, December 3, 1985

Well, I finally figured out how they decide what ward a kid’ll go to when he gets admitted to Mount Scopus. If he still sleeps in a crib, they put him on Infants’; if he’s out of the crib but hasn’t committed any violent crime yet, they put him on Children’s; and once he’s committed his first violent crime, he automatically goes to Adolescent. Yes, what a wonderful experience it is to take care of ten- and eleven-year-olds wanted by the police in three states for armed robbery.

Okay, so maybe I’m exaggerating, but only a little. What a weird place this Adolescent ward is! As I see it, we’ve got three groups of patients. The first are those kids with truly medical problems; these are mainly kids with different types of cancers; they really make things pretty sad. The second are the girls with eating disorders like anorexia nervosa and bulimia; what a thrill it is to take care of eighteen-year-old girls who weigh seventy pounds and think they’re too fat, and who spend the entire day exercising and trying to find places to hide their vomit. And the third group are the drug addicts who come in for detox and for antibiotics for their skin abscesses. Yes, this is all a very rewarding experience.

And, of course, everybody’s got VD. I’ve had to do pelvic exams on everything that’s come through the front door! At least on every female; I haven’t had to do one on a male yet, but hey, the month’s still young, and anything can happen. It doesn’t even matter what they come in with, they always wind up having PID [pelvic inflammatory disease, the common name for infection of one or more pelvic organs, usually caused by gonococcus, the bacteria that causes gonorrhea; PID is diagnosed by pelvic exam and confirmed by culture results].