Thoughts from the third week of my second year

I'm relieved to say that being a second year is fun! It's frustrating, different, astonishing, but not near as scary as I thought it would be. I've lived through my first code, multiple RRT's (pre-codes), and my first overnight call. My hours are better. And, trying to manage an intern and a medical student has taught me:
A. I really have learned a lot, even though I feel like I can't learn enough!
B. Trying to teach someone requires a lot of patience
C. I'm REALLY Anal.
D. Trying to prioritize codes, patients, clinic calls, pages, and all the other craziness that goes along with being a second year is hard!

Still, getting to be more in charge has been fun. Letting my intern write notes and answer pages is even more fun. But I truly enjoy seeing how I can help someone grow. I like interacting with the families more closely, and talking to the consultants and attendings. Medicine is even more fascinating this way.

I thought I'd try something different and attempt to write about a particularly memorial patient once a week or so, as most of what are the highlights or struggles of my week revolve around a particular patient. I've learned so much about people and society too, through my patients. Of course, there are privacy rules so I'll have to be appropriately vague. This week, I thought I'd tell you about a lady we had, 88 years old, who came to us in terrible shape. She was painfully thin, blind, slightly demented, and hornery as they came. She couldn't even sit up without help. She had been found unconscious by a friend, no one knew how long she'd been like this. Long story short, she has been living alone, unsafely, for two years now. She had never married, no kids, no living relatives but a nephew, who was worried sick about her. She had had adult protective services called on her many times but she refused to let them in. She was determined to live her life as independently as she could and to die "on her own two feet, kicking and screaming", just as she'd lived her life. She had had her electricity cut off because she'd forgotten to pay the bills. She was paranoid, so she refused to let anyone help her with her bills. She thought we were trying to poison her and steal all her money. She thought she was getting along quite fine, thank you, and was eating like a horse and getting to the store herself and we were all crazy to think she needed more help. This, of course, put us in a bad spot, as it was clear this was not true and she was not safe to go home herself and that she was delusional. We were able to find a way to start the guardianship process for her nephew and to get her to agree to go to a nursing home, but I had such mixed feelings about all of it. It was sad to me, that she had had no one to look after her for so long. It seemed sad to me that we live in a society where we are too busy to take care of our elderly people and instead send them to places where all they see are other old, sick people. What a way to cheer them up! We felt bad that she so obviously didn't want to go to a nursing home, and we basically were trying to convince her to do something she didn't want to do, but we couldn't send her home. We just couldn't, it would be like sending her to her death. Maybe she'll find she likes the nursing home, where they can wait on her and she can eat all she wants. I was impressed with her indomitable spirit. Maybe she will get better and go home in spite of our dire predictions. I rather hope so.