That kind of call

Had my first clinical of the semester yesterday. I was riding with a critical care transport unit. My first call was ‘in house’ moving a patient from the ICU to the angio lab. This was pretty cool, as I got to watch the angiography on his brain. (very generally angiography is when they put radioactive ‘ink’ in the bloodstream and x-ray it to identify problems with your vascular system) I was hoping that the bleed would be really obvious but it turned out to be this tiny little thing that was unnoticeable to anyone normal.

My other call of the day was bad yet good; the circumstances tragic, the outcome unknown. (I’ll be watching the paper for the next few days.) For a full account you can rent my diary, but the price has gone up. Yet, somehow I got front row seats to a cut-down IV, chest tube insertion, needle decompression, and later a central line insertion. Even better, I understood nearly every aspect of the patients treatment, including drug therapy.
Although I did little to nothing in terms of patient care, I feel it’s one of the best calls I’ve been on. It was a tough call, but don’t go calling your CISM friends or anything.
It may take time. It will be okay.

Sometimes there are the calls where you’re reminded of human frailty. The kind of call that when they’re over you need to call your family to be sure that they’re okay. The kind of call that makes you seek out your coping mechanisms and hope they work. The kind of call that makes someone who loves beer say: “Maybe I shouldn’t have any tonight.” The kind of call that’s not gone the next day.