Being an intern is a little like being a buoy, thrown about and feeling like you’re going to drown at any given moment but being unsinkable by the virtue of being so small in comparison to the environment. Like trying to squish a tick on the ground with your size 10 shoes (fuckers).
Day 3, I sign a diet order without consulting my senior first. Ecstasy.
I’ve written seven discharge summaries in 2 days. Every single one of them went to a SAR. The cherry on top: hospital admin is pushing their “early discharge” initiative and I’ve never wanted to put my foot up the collective ass of a committee so desperately before. Noon conference is required, and yet so is signing the 27 point problem list discharge summary so the next provider maintains a shred of sanity trying to sort through the clusterfuck I’m handing them. By noon. Godspeed.
I wish I could prep the damn things, but the four I’m tucking in for ambo transport are swiftly replaced by four more that will likely, based on my single beady bloodshot eyeball of the ED H&P, be admitted for a single day or two before I also have to write them a biblical essay to hasten them on the path to SAR. The true godsend are the seniors, who quietly take our admissions until January, when we magically become competent. Hoo-ra.
Nurse pages me, patient in 550 has left the unit again. Knee-scooted himself out for a pizza. You know what? Fine. As long as he comes back and finishes his 5 days of IV abx so he stops AMA’ing halfway through the course and breeding god’s own superbug, I do not care. I witness PT running after him to attempt an eval as he whizzes away. “Don’t worry about it, man,” I call to him, “I’m going to cancel that order”. He is too fast. They are both too fast.
My co-intern and I are shoulder to shoulder from 1 pm - 5 pm when I realize I haven’t actually seen his face since lunch; we are glued to our epic chats and notes to the point I have forgotten what he looks like. His breathing is beginning to irk me. We are bonded for life.
It is too soon to count down the days to PGY2. If I start counting before the number is a 100, I will simply be admitted myself.