The Intern Blues(98)

And finally, there were the nurses. I really got to like those nurses. They’re superb; they’re fun to work with, they’ve got a great sense of humor. I learned to depend on them totally and to trust them. They do a lot of things that need to be done without you ever knowing about them. They ask you to write the orders for them after they’ve finished. They know so much, they’re each like a doctor. Many times we’ll be sitting there, scratching our heads, trying to figure things out, and they’re flipping the dials, running the lines, drawing up meds, making decisions they are confident with. And they just say, “This is what you want, isn’t it?” as they push it in the line. So they are real lifesavers, and I’m going to miss them.





Amy


FEBRUARY 1986

Sunday, February 2, 1986

All year, anytime anybody’s asked me to do something, I’ve done it without an argument. It seems it works only one way, though, because whenever I’ve asked someone to do me a favor, nobody’s willing to help out. It’s disgusting.

This is what happened: I started my two weeks in OPD last Monday. I had only two weeks to go before my vacation, so I figured it would be a cinch. But when I got home from work last Monday afternoon, Marie told me she thought Sarah was coming down with something. She hadn’t eaten well during the day, which isn’t like her, she’d been kind of sleepy, and she had a runny nose. Sure enough, I put her to bed at about nine and she woke up at a little after eleven, screaming at the top of her lungs. Larry and I ran into her room and found that she was burning up. I took her temperature: It was a 103.4°. It took about twenty minutes to get her to stop crying, and when she finally calmed down, I checked her over. I couldn’t find anything specifically wrong, her ears looked fine and everything, but she still had rhinitis [runny nose] and she was coughing a lot, and I noticed the whites of her eyes were red. I figured it was just the virus that was going around. I gave her some Tylenol and rocked her back to sleep, and she finally dropped off at about midnight.

She woke up again at 2:00 A.M. She was screaming, and her temperature was back up. I gave her more Tylenol and tried to calm her down, but this time she just wouldn’t stop crying. I was sure she had meningitis and I told Larry to get dressed because we had to take her to the emergency room, but just as he finished getting his clothes on, she quieted down and fell back to sleep. I guess the Tylenol had kicked in. Anyway, she slept the rest of the night, but I didn’t; I stayed awake in her room, watching her constantly. I was sure something terrible was going to happen.

On Tuesday morning, she woke up in a much better mood and her fever was gone. I figured whatever was wrong had reached its peak and now she was getting better. When Marie came, I told her about what had happened and made sure she knew how much Tylenol to give if the fever came back. I had clinic that morning and was going to be in the ER that afternoon and night, so I left Marie a schedule of where I’d be if she needed to contact me, and I left for work.

I should have called in sick, but I went to clinic anyway. Marie called at about ten-thirty to tell me that Sarah’s fever was back and that she had this rash all over her. I told her I’d be home in a few minutes and I rushed through the rest of my clinic patients. I was done by about eleven and I ran home to find Sarah’s fever back up to 103. She was miserable; she was coughing and sneezing and covered with snot, and she had a whopping conjunctivitis. And she had a raised red rash on her face and chest. I wasn’t sure what it was, so I called Alan Cozza. He told me to bring her right over.

Well, to make a long story a little shorter, Alan took one look at her and said, “My God, she’s got the measles!” I had never seen anyone with measles before; kids just don’t get it, because we immunize them. Alan brought some of the other interns who were on the floor in to see Sarah just so they’d know what measles looked like. I have no idea where she got it; she’s a baby, she doesn’t go outside, she doesn’t hang around with other kids except sometimes when Marie takes her down to the lobby, but that’s rare. But anyway, she had it. Alan told me to take her home and give her Tylenol and fluids and just make her as comfortable as possible and that it would pass in a few days.

By that point it was nearly one o’clock. I was supposed to be in the ER starting at one, and since I was on call that night, I’d be staying in the ER until maybe three or four in the morning. So I decided to stop in and talk to the chief residents; I figured, hearing that Sarah was so sick, they’d naturally say, “Well, why don’t you just stay home with your daughter tonight?” Yeah, right!