Taking Call

I have taken call at LDS hospital 2 nights so far. When I am on call, I am responsible for about 25-35 general surgery patients as well as any new patients who come into the ER during the night with surgical issues. Most of the pages I get from the nurses are relatively easy to deal with, like ordering a medication to help a patient sleep or alleviate their pain. However, every once in a while, there is an urgent page that gets my heart beating faster. The first night I was on call at LDS, I was paged about a patient that I knew very little about. He been operated on earlier in the week for a perforated bowel, and he was in the ICU. I was told that his abdomen was extremely distended and his blood pressure was low despite strong medication. I was able to assess the situation and we got him stabilized, but there is no feeling more lonely than staring at a very sick patient from the foot of his/her bed trying to figure out what to do next.

Last night I was on call and was able to assist on an appendectomy as well as a cholecystectomy (gall bladder removal). Around midnight I was paged by a nurse who told me that the patient whose appendix we took out had arrived back in his room but was coughing uncontrollably and not oxygenating well either. I went up to see him and he promptly began to cough up some blood. His worried wife looked at me with eyes that said "Is he going to die?" Even when my mind is spinning and I am nervous on the inside, I do my best to be calm and cool on the outside. Fortunately the patient improved with some breathing treatments and the rest of his workup for more serious problems was negative, but I have to admit that I was quite concerned for a while. It's hard to be cool as a cucumber when a previously healthy patient appears to be crashing and everyone is looking at you for the answers.