Wait, so... what happens now? I think I have too much time in the morning. Today I’m only carrying one patient becuase
Tomorrow I think I’ll be able to carry two. B--- said there was a new admission that might have my name on it.
Either way, I think I’m okay for rounds. I don’t, like, fully know what’s happening with this baby, but I’m just a little med student so is anyone really expecting anything of me anyway? I doubt it. So I’m going to enjoy this time sitting around doing not much of anything.
It’s amazing how second nature this whole pre-rounding morning ritual seems to these residents. It’s actually crazy how they just do it
They have that human element of making little jokes and talking about unrelated stuff in the meanwhile, but mostly it’s them sat at their computers (their “WOWs”) just typing away, occasionally writing things from the screen onto a paper.
Again with the two-dimensional lifestyleness of it all. It’s very 2D here. It’s kind of sad that these people, who are some of the best the world has to offer intellectually speaking, are reserved to
I don’t know what else I have to say, if anything, right now. Maybe nothing? So then... is this just a moment of peace? Yes, it is... it actually is.... A moment of peace before the storm of rounds... and a storm it is. A group of five or six high-powered individuals sweeping through the nick you and dominating the airspace wherever we go.... It’s kind of insane to behold, and even more insane (or possibly less, who knows) to be a part of it. Maybe it’s like being in the eye of the hurricane. There is quiet for just a moment. Blue skies or yellow skies or whatever the fuck he said in hamilton. What a chintzy kind of musical, bruh.
But yeah, I imagine what the nurses must feel like before we roll through to them.... Maybe some amount of dread as they steal glances in our direction, seeing us go on for
on the same patient, knowing that any second now we could turn our attention to them, and then they’re on.
It really does feel like a performance, you know? It’s a whole-ass performance, and it’s a ritual, it’s both, it’s all of the above, it's everything in here.
I just can’t deal with all of the self-importance. Even as i look at this seemingly beautiful picture on the wall of what looks like a nurse holding a newborn baby in a tub of water, i can’t help but notice this look of self-importance on her face, as if to say “this is the most important job in the world.” i don’t know, man. It’s important, for sure, and it’s great that there are people doing this stuff, and......
I don’t know, ultimately. I just don’t know! I don’t know anything about nothing about shit. There’s nothing up there.
Let me check my phone and see if i can get the electronic medical record app downloaded.
Actually, I’m not downloading that shit. If someone needs to contact me they can wait until i’m able to access my damn computer. I’m just happy to be able to access the records in the first place now.
I don’t know what the fates are going to tell me about whether to talk to Dr. K---- today. Maybe if i can find a time to pull her aside i’ll do that, perhaps after rounds or something. I can ask her, 'hey, can i talk to you after rounds are over? Where can i come find you for a brief conversation?' Whatever, dude. My god. This place is so.... Ugh.
There was just a signal for a baby code. I just sat around. D----- sprung into action, and Y--- turned around to look at me and was like, 'have you seen a code?' i said no, and he said, 'maybe you should go with D-----.' Like bitch, I really do not want to see nothing of this sort. Please, can you leave me out of all of these duties and let me just go on surviving?
I really do feel the full weight of each stress hormone as it gets sent into my body. Like holy shit, dude. Each of these experiences charges me up in ways that feel so entirely unpleasant.
It does feel like a relief to name that, i guess. It feels like a relief to remind myself that being so activated all the time might actually take a toll on me, and it’s clearly taking a toll on these poor residents, although i’m sure they’re more adjusted to it and they have less like sensitivity to it... but that kind of scares me.
Thinking mechanisticallly and in terms of receptors and saturation and shit like that, i’m just like.... The stress hormones must have some kind of sophisticated negative feedback thing going on with them at this point. Like, these people must be so used to the chronic stress that they don't feel stress at all until it’s a real fucking stressful situation.
O-- was saying yesterday that neonatologists exist in a state of dissociation from their patients. That’s sort of interesting, i guess.... The concept of dissociation keeps coming back to me, and i’ll keep it in mind. I’ll just keep it in mind. track changes
Someday there will be way to see these things. Maybe when i enter spectator maode after i die, there will be an option to shrink down to any size, and i can go inside of the bodies of these doctors like 'hmmm,
and are they oversaturated?' and shit like that. 'what adaptiations has your body made to protect you from how horrific this job is?' i think we might be surprised at the answer.
Ultimately, though, i find it hard to separate myself from the parentheses of, like, settler colonialism and the uhh.....
I guess it’s something like a comfort to know that my body just isn’t used to this shit yet, and that i will eventually get sensitized or something to the cortisolic activation and the norepinephrine and whatever the fuck. Like, today is day three, and it already feels a little more manageable, but i also feel somehow more stressed out by it all than i did on day one. You know? Like, on day one, i felt sort of apppppppropriate for the workplace. i felt like i was in a state of happiness, and the novelty was protecting me from some of the harsher realities. Now that i’m sort of in this
it feels a little harder. But we don’t worry. We don’t worry.
I know that when i think of Dr. K---- i get stressed out, and i know the stress is undue, because this is type of stress that would not even really register for her. So i need to keep that in mind: these people have other things that they’re stressing about that do not include me and my my stresses, ya feel? They are not stressing about me not being in rounds yesterday. I was there in the beginning, and i was there, i was there, i was there, and then i wasn’t, and nobody cares about that except for me. Nobody cares about it, not really.
So like.... Yeah, cortisol is the theme of the day as we sit here on day three.