I've decided it's not the heat here in Central Texas that bothers me; it's how long it lasts. I could easily handle a worse summer than we've had here--only a couple of days over 100 degrees!--if it just ended sooner.
Something about the constant bright sunlight and the lows in the 80's really wears me down.
So does work. Work is wearing me the hell down, People.
I almost had to call in the Ethics Peeps this week. Mama is dying of a nasty sort of metastatic cancer that's hit her brain, liver, spine, and various other bits of important equipment. She has a midline incision from her breastbone on down that won't heal, a couple of cracked ribs from a previous code, 3+ edema every-damn-where, she's breathing too fast and her heart's wearing out, and she's seizing constantly and has been for about the last three weeks. Oh, and she has a galloping infection under her scalp, where a bone flap was taken out when some other neuro guys somewhere else resected a tumor in her brain. That's the least of her problems, frankly.
We've spent the last two weeks trying to convince Son that perhaps Mama should, when Jesus calls, actually pick up the phone. She was a full code this entire time. That means, for you non-medical people, that if her heart or breathing had stopped, we would've gone into Super Nurse Grey's Anatomy Mode and tried our best to bring her back. (Well, not really. I would've walked slowly to that particular code.)
The trouble is that, when you're trying to save people who are that sick, you end up torturing them.
Even the best, most well-executed code has only about a three-in-ten chance of bringing the patient back. And by "bringing the patient back," I don't mean they walk out of the hospital. I mean we stabilize them enough to get them into the CCU, where they'll be intubated and sedated and have drugs pumped into them that will keep their blood pressure up while causing their intestines to slough off and their hands and feet to turn black and gangrenous and we'll put 'em on external continuous dialysis and they'll have tubes coming out of every orifice. . . .
It's ugly. In twelve years, I have heard of--not actually seen--one patient leave the hospital under his own power after a code. Part of that has to do with the people we code: not many, because we're big on comfort care and being rational. Part of it has to do with the population we serve: once your brain goes bad, there's not much point in keeping your heart beating, and no real good way to do it.
Anyway. Mama and I had gotten well-acquaint (or as well-acquaint as you can with somebody who twitches and moans) and I was looking forward to the probability that I would be breaking more ribs, causing her belly wound to come apart and her guts spill everywhere, and generally doing something I didn't want to do. We actually had a call in to the ethics committee about Mama, when a doc I had not met before came sailing in like a white knight and saved the fucking day.
The dude is new to the hospitalist program. I met him for the first time after he'd been straightforward and a tiny bit brutal with Son about Mama's chances. I could've hugged him. Instead, I called Ethics back and told 'em to stand down.
Mama is now a DNR. She's not on palliative care yet, but I'm happy just being able to not have to consider coding her.
Sometimes things work out okay, relatively speaking.