Hey! August 25th 1994
My day started with Benton waking me up after having a tiny nap. I was just soo exhausted from the non-stop pace. I can't understand how Benton manages to work so much with so very little sleep. He said that if he slept anything more than 3 hours he'd be sluggish all day.
After working in the ER for a little while I now get to assist in some traumas. Together with Benton and dr. Sarah Langworthy I treated a hit and run victim, who unfortunately was pronounced dead after we'd been working on him for 31 minutes. It was the first death I'd ever witnessed. Seeing the dead teenager lying on the gurney was terrible. Only an hour earlier he had been alive. Maybe he had great plans for this day when he woke up. Maybe he was on his way to meet some friends when someone hit him and then killed him. I know I'll never get answers, but for some reason I saw a lot of me in him. I've been thinking of him all day. Hopefully I'll manage to sleep.
Although Haleh told me we lose them all the time, I was still pretty crushed and shaken.
Unfortunately the victim… I don't like calling him "the victim". I'll call him the boy. The boy had no identification on him, but he was wearing gym shorts from Von Stuben High. Dr. Langworthy told me to call the high school and find someone who could help identify him.
Just as dr. Langworthy had told me what to do, Benton interfered, almost claiming to be the owner of me. Sometimes I don't get surgeons!
The best the school could do was supplying the yearbook, and when I entered the trauma room with the dead boy I still felt shaken. It took me a while, but eventually I managed to identify him as Steven Tierney, or so I thought…
I called the parents telling them that their son had been involved in a very serious car accident, and that they needed to come right away. And so they did. Making that phone call was very hard so I was a little glad that Benton was the one who told them the news. As parents do, they broke down and asked to see him. When they saw him they reacted with both horror and relief. This wasn't their son. I'd made a huge mistake. All I wanted to was to disappear.
I also badly wanted to take a shower. I was on my way to the lab with some urine samples when this man with a cell phone made a woman's pacemaker go bananas. She accidentally hit the urine samples and they all came down on me. Yummy!
Later we found out the real identity of the boy, David Fisher. When the parents came it was my turn to tell them, and this time it was the right parents. I think I managed to tell them the bad news pretty good, but I was a wreck during the whole time.
The rest of today I felt so useless and stupid. I seriously began think whether I'd made the right choice about becoming a doctor. I can't do anything right…. As I sat outside the ER entrance thinking, Jerry came to smoke a cigar. I talked to him about my terrible mistake and about my chances of coming back to work at all. Suddenly a car in quite a wild speed pulled up with a man yelling that his wife was delivering a baby. Jerry told me to take care of it, but I didn't know what to do. Amazingly Jerry had full control and told me to take the head while he went for help. I did as Jerry had told me, but it wasn't easy when the woman grabbed a hold of my hair as she pushed. I'm glad Haleh was there. She instructed me and then I delivered a little baby girl. Then Malik and Jerry put the baby and the mother on a gurney and brought them inside.
I couldn't understand what I just had done. In one moment I was about to give up my career in medicine and in the next I welcomed a little girl into the world. Not knowing what to do I just screamed. "Yes!"
This has been a great day,
John
My day started with Benton waking me up after having a tiny nap. I was just soo exhausted from the non-stop pace. I can't understand how Benton manages to work so much with so very little sleep. He said that if he slept anything more than 3 hours he'd be sluggish all day.
After working in the ER for a little while I now get to assist in some traumas. Together with Benton and dr. Sarah Langworthy I treated a hit and run victim, who unfortunately was pronounced dead after we'd been working on him for 31 minutes. It was the first death I'd ever witnessed. Seeing the dead teenager lying on the gurney was terrible. Only an hour earlier he had been alive. Maybe he had great plans for this day when he woke up. Maybe he was on his way to meet some friends when someone hit him and then killed him. I know I'll never get answers, but for some reason I saw a lot of me in him. I've been thinking of him all day. Hopefully I'll manage to sleep.
Although Haleh told me we lose them all the time, I was still pretty crushed and shaken.
Unfortunately the victim… I don't like calling him "the victim". I'll call him the boy. The boy had no identification on him, but he was wearing gym shorts from Von Stuben High. Dr. Langworthy told me to call the high school and find someone who could help identify him.
Just as dr. Langworthy had told me what to do, Benton interfered, almost claiming to be the owner of me. Sometimes I don't get surgeons!
The best the school could do was supplying the yearbook, and when I entered the trauma room with the dead boy I still felt shaken. It took me a while, but eventually I managed to identify him as Steven Tierney, or so I thought…
I called the parents telling them that their son had been involved in a very serious car accident, and that they needed to come right away. And so they did. Making that phone call was very hard so I was a little glad that Benton was the one who told them the news. As parents do, they broke down and asked to see him. When they saw him they reacted with both horror and relief. This wasn't their son. I'd made a huge mistake. All I wanted to was to disappear.
I also badly wanted to take a shower. I was on my way to the lab with some urine samples when this man with a cell phone made a woman's pacemaker go bananas. She accidentally hit the urine samples and they all came down on me. Yummy!
Later we found out the real identity of the boy, David Fisher. When the parents came it was my turn to tell them, and this time it was the right parents. I think I managed to tell them the bad news pretty good, but I was a wreck during the whole time.
The rest of today I felt so useless and stupid. I seriously began think whether I'd made the right choice about becoming a doctor. I can't do anything right…. As I sat outside the ER entrance thinking, Jerry came to smoke a cigar. I talked to him about my terrible mistake and about my chances of coming back to work at all. Suddenly a car in quite a wild speed pulled up with a man yelling that his wife was delivering a baby. Jerry told me to take care of it, but I didn't know what to do. Amazingly Jerry had full control and told me to take the head while he went for help. I did as Jerry had told me, but it wasn't easy when the woman grabbed a hold of my hair as she pushed. I'm glad Haleh was there. She instructed me and then I delivered a little baby girl. Then Malik and Jerry put the baby and the mother on a gurney and brought them inside.
I couldn't understand what I just had done. In one moment I was about to give up my career in medicine and in the next I welcomed a little girl into the world. Not knowing what to do I just screamed. "Yes!"
This has been a great day,
John