Category Archives: Health

Today We Start Insulin

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“Today we are going to start you on insulin. Given your high A1C level (a lab that shows your average blood sugar over 3 months), it is recommended so that we can better lower your blood sugar. Lowering your blood sugar is important because when your blood sugar is this high it can affect many aspects of your health including severely increasing your risk of heart disease and stroke,” I said. It was the second time I’d seen this patient in my clinic. They were quick to laugh and had a full life.

The patient hung their head. This was the first time I had started someone on insulin as a primary care doctor (we use insulin exclusively to manage diabetes in the hospital, but in the outpatient setting it’s reserved for specific indications). Starting insulin isn’t supposed to be punitive but some patients feel as though it is because of the stigma associated with diabetes.

There are numerous medical diseases and conditions that are stigmatized. Among the most common I see are diabetes, obesity, psychiatric diseases, and sexually transmitted diseases. People with diabetes are often blamed for having the disease. If or when they require insulin, the patient may feel like their need for insulin is a failure because their blood sugar was not controlled with other treatment measures. People with diabetes can be labeled as “weak” and “lacking self-control.” This labeling is out-of-place and unproductive. While lifestyle (such as diet and exercise) does contribute to the development and progression of diabetes, lifestyle is only part of the story.

In addition to individual choices, other parts of life like genetics, environment, and the social determinants of health have an important impact on health outcomes including the development of chronic diseases like diabetes. Further, it is critical to be able to have open and respectful conversations about patients’ individual situations and how their lives might be optimized to manage their diabetes and to reduce their likelihood of developing complications from diabetes. Stigma gets in the way of having these open, respectful conversations. When people have diabetes, the disease can severely increase their risk of death by heart disease and complications such as vision loss, nerve damage, kidney damage, and infection. This makes management of diabetes with a multimodal approach – including lifestyle optimization and medications – essential. Judgement has no place in developing a therapeutic plan.

When I recommended insulin to my patient, it was not as punishment. It was without judgement. It was out of concern for their health. The strategies we had tried to lower their blood sugar to that point weren’t working. The patient was doing so well otherwise. They didn’t have kidney problems. Their feet still had feeling. They hadn’t had a heart attack. I wanted them to live without these complications for as long as possible.

As the patient left the appointment, I was hopeful that our new strategy would help them lower their blood sugar. I also hoped that this patient felt respected even if they were unhappy about starting insulin. I’d see how they did with the insulin at our next visit. Time would tell if insulin at the dose we started would work for them or if we would need to make further adjustments. Chronic conditions require long-term (often life-long) treatment plans. Flexibility to adjust the plan as life develops is critical for success. This patient with diabetes was no exception. I looked forward to working together to lower their blood sugar in the months and years ahead. 

Maybe Tomorrow

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“Maybe tomorrow you can be discharged,” the doctor leading my team said to the patient. I’d lost track of how many days in a row he had said that.

The patient had cancer and was undergoing treatment. Did you know that chemo is poison? We use it hoping to destroy cancer before we destroy the person who has the cancer. Chemo saves lives. Chemo causes all kinds of side effects. Chemo often works. Chemo doesn’t always work.

This patient was neutropenic which means that they had no white blood cells to fight infection. No white blood cells to fight infection means even the wimpiest infection could kill them. To avoid death by infection, they needed to stay in the hospital for IV antibiotics and monitoring every time they had a fever.

We couldn’t find the cause of their fever. No source of infection. 24 hours without a fever, “Maybe tomorrow you can discharge, you just need to be 48 hours without a fever to go home,” my supervising doctor said to the patient.

The patient’s red blood cell count dropped so they needed a blood transfusion. Were they bleeding? “Maybe tomorrow you can discharge, if you don’t need another transfusion.”

 They also had a rash. Was that from chemo, cancer, or something else? It was a really uncomfortable-looking rash. Blisters and red all over their torso. “Maybe tomorrow.”

The “maybe tomorrows” dragged on. All the patient wanted to do was go home. They wanted to have some control over their life. They wanted to feel the breeze on their cheeks. They wanted to live. They wanted to see their friends and family. But cancer is a tricky beast. It takes one’s freedom and lands one in the hospital more days than anyone would ever choose.

But, at last, tomorrow did come. We were all happy when the supervising doctor said the patient could leave the hospital. The patient was excited to go home. No one mentioned that it was only a matter of time before they’d be back to start another string of maybe tomorrows. Sometimes there’s no point in saying things that everyone already knows. No need to speak the unpleasant into existence. It will come when it comes.

The patients and families on the cancer wards are among the strongest people you’ll ever meet. Their strength is like the endurance of ultramarathoners, not sprinters. Their strength is one of days running into weeks running into months. Counting the years. Their strength is one of setbacks and small victories. Of bodies changed and freedom lost to be reinvented. Their strength is keeping hope for tomorrow while knowing that it may never come.

The Social Determinants of Health

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I was walking home from a series of hard shifts. My mind slid back to the first code I ever worked. “Code” is medical slang for when you do CPR and try to get someone’s heart to start again after it stops. My first code was a trauma-code. The story was that the patient lost a literal game of Russian roulette. The injury they had from the close-range bullet was not compatible with life. But the patient was young and when their heart stopped, the doctor overseeing the case didn’t pronounce them dead right away. Their heart didn’t respond to CPR; they died.  

That code was years ago. I hadn’t thought about it too much since it happened. Medicine is full of sad stories. I was surprised that the memory of the code entered my thoughts as I walked home. I wondered why I was thinking of it. I realized quickly: I was angry.

I don’t often get angry when working in medicine. The more common emotions I have on the job are excited, interested, happy, annoyed, exhausted, and sad – sometimes within the same interaction. I’ve only been angry a few times in my ever-lengthening medical career. I wasn’t angry at my first code, so why had I thought of it when I was angry?

On that day when I remembered my first code, I had cared for a patient who was dying of advanced heart failure even though they had the unblemished skin of youth. At first it would seem my current patient and the patient who died during my first code had nothing in common except an early death. But as I thought about it, I realized that they had more in common than it seemed at first.

Both patients would die harsh deaths. The code was fast, and the heart failure would be slow. And while both patients had easily observable health conditions, I found myself wondering if they were dying of those conditions or if they were dying because they were victims of something much greater. Could their deaths have been avoided if society hadn’t pushed them down so many times in their short lives? Were they dying of disease or of the social determinants of health?

The social determinants of health are non-medical factors that influence health; they’re the social and structural realities that shape how people interact and live. The social determinants of health include access to education, food, and secure housing. They include neighborhood exposures (the positive like puppies and playgrounds and the negative like violence and drug misuse). They include skin color, first language, sex, and gender. The list goes on.

I was angry because there was nothing more I could do for the patient with heart failure, just as there had been nothing more I could do for the young patient whose heart stopped all those years ago. Society had failed them. Collectively the two patients had experienced racism, the jail system, drug use disorder, mental health struggles, unfair treatment by employers, barriers to education, and likely countless other obstacles that I did not uncover during my short interactions with them. The patient dying of heart failure was difficult. They didn’t trust the healthcare system and they were profoundly unpleasant to work with. As I learned more about their story, I came to understand that while it is never okay to be mean it is also sometimes easy to see why a person could become mean. This patient had been knocked down so many times throughout their short life that it seemed all they knew how to do was fight. And, unfortunately, they were fighting for their life. And while they had not yet acknowledged it, they were losing. Would it be months before they died? Maybe a year or two because they were young? Maybe they’d be a miracle case and live much longer. I, however, don’t count on miracles.

I was angry because I thought the healthcare system was the last part of society to fail my patient with heart failure. I (and my team) tried to build a case to make them eligible for advanced heart failure treatments, all of which have strict criteria. The criteria are strict because all advanced therapies for heart failure are complex and require incredible collaboration between the patient and their care team, otherwise they fail to work. Among the options for some patients (not all) is heart transplant which has even stricter criteria because organs are scarce. In the end, the patient I was caring for was deemed not a candidate for any advanced therapies. They were not a candidate because they showed a consistent record of disregarding medical advice and missing their follow up medical appointments and prescribed medications.

After days of long conversations with the young patient with heart failure I understood that it wasn’t just personality that drove them to fight against medical advice. It was a fear of death, a desire for independence, and a long history of mistrust built on a life of the system failing them. There were many negative social determinants of health which had worked against them their whole life. I was angry because what is done can’t be undone. Just as death cannot be stopped when it comes calling. It’s unfair when and how death calls; it’s a metaphorical game of Russian roulette.

Being angry about the social determinants of health doesn’t solve them, but sometimes being angry is a place to start. And so, on that walk home and for a little while after, I let myself be angry. Part of writing this post was sorting out why I was angry. The next step is figuring out what can be done to address the social determinants of health. They are numerous and complex so there isn’t one solution and they’re slow to change. The young patient with heart failure reminded me that while I’m focusing on learning the science of medicine right now, I can’t forget the public health and community work I did before I jumped into residency. I can’t forget because when I’m an independently working physician, my patients won’t come to me with just disease. They will come to me with life stories that influence every aspect of their medical care.

Maintaining the Body/Mind

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In zooming around healthcare settings, I’ve noticed that many people approach illness as a weakness or a betrayal of their body and mind. I’ve even noticed myself having a similar feeling occasionally when I must visit my own doctor. This way of thinking is like how I think about my car: I expect my car to get me from A to B every time I ask it to, with minimal effort on my part, and no upkeep.

To further outline the analogy between bodies/minds and cars:

  • The hospital is to the body/mind as the auto shop is to a car after a crash. If something gets damaged, we usually must fix it to run again.
  • The primary care setting is to the body/mind as an oil change, tire change, and alignment are to a car. For optimal performance, we must continuously do some upkeep and occasionally get a tune up.

As we examine the analogy between cars and bodies/minds there is an essential difference. If we have the money, we can buy a new car periodically to avoid all the upkeep that inevitably comes with the wear and tear of use. However, we each only get one body/mind and, therefore, not even money can spare us the required upkeep that comes with the wear and tear of life.

Considering that we each only get one body/mind and life is hard, I’d like to propose the viewpoint that going to a primary care provider isn’t a visit with the enemy. It’s not intended to be a place of judgement or punishment. Instead, think of primary care appointments as tune ups that include chatting with an expert on the human body/mind. In this chat, we can uncover what aspects of our body/mind are optimized, what aspects aren’t optimal, and how we each can make our body/mind run better. By optimizing our body/mind, we may prevent many diseases from occurring (prevention is better than treatment, why get sick if there’s a way to avoid it completely?). 

In a similar fashion, no one wants to stay in the hospital, but needing the hospital isn’t unique; it’s part of the human experience in places where hospitals exist. Hospitals can save lives and fix big health problems. They might not be the most pleasant places, but without them we might not get the care we need to recover when things in our bodies/minds break. If we can think of our hospital care team as a bunch of people on our side who are looking out for our bodies/minds, it might make the whole experience a little better.

 Just as we know our cars require a certain amount of upkeep, I challenge all of us to remember that the body and mind also require a certain amount of upkeep without considering a need for that upkeep a shortcoming.

Finding Purpose and Meaning

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The patient was nicely dressed and collected. They sat with elegance as I chatted with them during their checkup. By most accounts they were doing well. They didn’t have many aching joints or the other common issues of people their age. But, as we finished going through all the normal appointment questions and checklist items for a primary care visit, the conversation turned to the main issue at hand: meaningful existence. 

The patient had recently moved from the south to the north to be close to their adult children. In moving, they had left behind the hair salon where they’d worked for many years and where they continued to work until moving. Nobody in their new, northern community would hire them as a hairdresser because of their age. This disappointed them. They were very energetic. They were involved in many clubs and had many social engagements weekly, yet, they found themselves depressed, tired, and empty. Nothing they were doing gave them the sense of purpose that working had.

We brainstormed together. If not work, could the patient volunteer? Where might they like to volunteer? Our town had many opportunities for volunteering. The patient jotted down a few nonprofit ideas and smiled. They said they’d consider it; it seemed better that sitting around doing pointless things.

Depression is common in the elderly. Among other things, it’s postulated that feelings of isolation and loss of purpose can contribute to depression. On an anecdotal level, I’ve heard many elderly patients describe feeling alone, especially when they’ve moved to be close to adult children and left behind an existing community their age or that they had been part of for a long time. Even children who visit frequently aren’t the same as having a whole community – especially a community that has also lived through the same decades and seen the same changes in the world. What’s more, many elderly people are retired or decrease their activity in work and volunteering. It’s easy to say that retirement and less work is good and that these wise people have worked their whole lives and deserve a rest. This is true; however, what I’ve also noticed anecdotally among the hundreds of patients I’ve met as a medical student, is that the happiest people are the people who have meaningful projects regardless of age.

This elderly patient is an example of someone who was driven to work well after they reached retirement age. Their case showed me that perhaps encouraging and supporting our elders to be active participants in their community would be helpful for their wellbeing. This seems especially important in a place like the US where many families are scattered all over the country and generations tend to live separately. There are many elderly folks who find meaning in caring for grandchildren as I’ve seen in other places like when I lived in Paraguay. However, we must remember that there are many elderly people who didn’t have children or who don’t wish to spend their days caring for their kids’ kids and that their need for meaningful activities is also valid. As we forge forward as a society, it seems prudent to keep this in mind and continue to support and develop programs that help an aging population remain active in their communities’ productivity and progress if they would like to be. Be it work, volunteering, or other projects in and out of the home.

Listening in Medicine

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This patient was always cheerful. Despite approaching a month in the hospital. Despite extensive injuries for which they required multiple procedures, surgeries, and a long course of antibiotics. Every time I checked in, they had a visitor, were listening to mass, or were simply doing life things.

One day when I stopped in, the patient was different. Still as pleasant as ever, but their cheer was guarded. I noticed that their voice was heavier. That their eyes were drooping at the edges. Their smile seemed more effortful. “Is everything okay? Are you okay?” I asked. In the minutes I was with the patient, I asked these questions periodically. Interleaving with the normal questions about signs and symptoms and physical exams I needed to do. I’ve learned that if you create space for things that haven’t been said to be said, sometimes patients share what’s bothering them and you can do something about it.

I paused as I was preparing to leave and asked one more time if the patient was okay. They started crying. I waited. “It’s just I haven’t seen my children. I miss my children,” the patient said. I’d come to learn that they had two young children who they hadn’t seen since their admission. They video called them but, obviously, that wasn’t the same as seeing their children and giving them hugs.

Since COVID, hospital visitation policies have become more restrictive. There are reasons for these restrictions, however the unintended consequence is patient social isolation which is bad for patient mental health to put it simply. At the time when I was seeing this patient, the hospital I was in was not allowing children to enter the hospital as visitors. Rules, though, usually have exceptions. I spoke with the nursing staff, as they steward hospital floors, and they were able to arrange for the patient to see their children.

This patient interaction reminded me how listening is critical in medicine. The hospital is a difficult place to have a good conversation as patient. The hospital is confusing and foreign to most people; there are unintentional power differences that exist as medical knowledge and understanding are uncommon among those who didn’t study medicine; there are many faces with different roles in the hospital so it’s impossible to keep track of who is the right person to ask for what; and the hospital is busy and short-staffed, so healthcare workers are doing their best but they are always running behind. Given these barriers to communication, the burden falls not on the patient but on their care team to ensure that time to hear patients’ needs is made. To do this doesn’t necessitate longer patient interactions, necessarily, but it does necessitate listening for more than reports of a fever or bowel changes.

It can be hard to listen for things that don’t directly relate to changing a patient’s care plan. Yet, patients are more than carriers of disease and, therefore, to best support them in their journey to better health we in healthcare must listen to all ailments. Sometimes we can lessen a burden and sometimes we can’t. Arranging for a parent to see their children after weeks in the hospital is something we can solve easily. I was glad I was able to help this patient see their children, but I wondered how long the patient had suffered from missing their children. Perhaps, if one of us from their care team had listened more carefully earlier, the patient wouldn’t have had to wait almost a month before seeing their children. To me, it seemed unreasonable to add the burden of missing loved ones to this patient’s burden of healing from an accident that had almost killed them and injuries that would likely change their life. Being sick is hard enough; let us in healthcare not forget the human things, like social supports, that can help make healing less daunting. 

Neurocysticercosis

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Repost of a post I wrote for the Global Health Diaries, the blog of the Global Health Program at the University of Vermont Robert Larner M.D. College of Medicine and the Western Connecticut Health Network. Find the original here.

Recently, I treated a patient with neurocysticercosis. While infection with Taenia solium is not common in the US, neurocysticercosis is not a zebra in Danbury, Connecticut because many patients are originally from countries where Taenia infection is a threat. The patient I saw was young and presented after having a seizure. Though they had received their diagnosis several years earlier at another US hospital, the disease course had started long before. Initially after their diagnosis, antiseizure medications were effective. The latest seizure occurred after a series of unfortunate events caused the patient to stop the medications.

The CT scan showed speckled calcifications throughout the brain. MRI revealed several enhancing lesions convincing us there was a need for antiparasitic and steroid treatment. The patient did well after treatment initiation and was discharged home to complete their albendazole and steroid course with a plan to follow-up with neurology. Their case lingered in my mind. It lingered not because of sadness or complexity, but because it reminded me of how connected our global population is and because the patient had impressed me with their calmness.

COVID-19 has highlighted how easily communicable diseases can travel and how important the health of the global community is for the health of our local communities. And while Taenia solium is an infectious disease, it does not spread like COVID-19. My chances of infection with Taenia solium are meager while living in Danbury, CT. Yet, we have patients with neurocysticercosis because people are mobile. I find it fascinating that the mix of diseases that are the most common in a particular hospital is not only dependent on the vectors and circumstance of life in the hospital region, but also the experiences and diseases prevalent in the places from which the people who make up the community around the hospital came.

As I contemplated our connectedness, the patient impressed me with their politeness and trust. Here was a person who was sick and did not speak English, yet they had complete faith that we could help them. I found myself humbled remembering that patients rely on us, the medical community, to guide them to better health when disease strikes. The patient’s calmness spread to anyone who spoke with them. There is something impressive about patients who can impart positive feelings on those around them despite being sick. I thought about the patient’s history and all the roads they had traveled so that our paths crossed during my medical training. Mobility is an amazing feature of the human experience. It both connects and separates us.

Burnt

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Her hands had become so numb she could no longer administer the eyedrops that kept the pressure in her eyes from getting too high. If her eye pressure got too high, she’d go blind. So, her eye doctor said she needed surgery if she couldn’t use the eye drops. There were two surgical options. One surgery would take an hour and she’d leave the operating room able to see. One would take 3 hours and she’d leave the operating room blind, requiring 4-6 weeks of recovery before her vision would return. She was lucky because she had family who already helped her a ton because her other health conditions had made independent living hard for her. For some reason, the insurance would only cover the 3-hour surgery that would leave her blind for over a month. The holidays were coming up. The family members that took care of her had kids. She refused to make them care for her while she was blind over the holidays. She postponed the surgery. Would she go blind before she could get her surgery? Is this the healthcare system we want?

~

The patient wasn’t COVID vaccinated. “What will you do to treat me if I get COVID?” she asked. I thought about the patient a resident had told me about. That patient had been dependent on family for care. His family didn’t vaccinate him. He got COVID. He came to the emergency room with trouble breathing and then went to the intensive care unit. He lived on the intensive care unit for a year. Eventually, his healthcare team cut a hole in his neck to put a breathing tube in because he needed it. They did everything they could to keep him alive. The resident said when the patient first came to the emergency room, he was a happy, funny soul. The patient lost his happiness slowly during the year he fought to breath. After a year of an entire hospital trying keep him alive, he died. When exactly did avoiding sickness fall out of favor? Do you ask what firefighters will do if you set fire to your house or do you make a concerted effort to not catch your house on fire knowing that firefighters will do their best to stop a fire if it occurs but are limited because fires are destructive and destroy houses and the people who try to stop them?

~

The patient asked, “Why are so many doctors retiring?” I wondered how he didn’t know the answer to that question already. It seems so obvious. Then, I realized he was not a medical student. Being a medical student is to have a front row seat for observing the current state of healthcare. What had I seen? Why did it seem perfectly logical to me that so many people were retiring from healthcare even as I was striving to make it my career?

Not just doctors and nurses, but everyone in healthcare seems to be retiring…

We report our COVID cases. Our COVID test rates. Our COVID survival rates after hospital admission. Our COVID deaths. Who was there to perform those tests, to care for those people when they came to the hospital, and to close the curtain when the ventilator wasn’t needed anymore? Healthcare workers. But, they were also there for all the other things too. The heart attacks. The stomach pain. The broken bones. The cancer. The normal healthcare screenings. They were there when people looked for help with their depression and their anxiety. Healthcare workers’ hours increased. They worked the job of two, three, four, and five people because the hospital was short-staffed before the pandemic hit. Again, healthcare workers were already working long hours and doing the work of several workers before COVID came. Then healthcare workers got sick. And the ones left standing worked for their sick colleagues, worked for themselves, and worked for the staff who were missing before the pandemic came. Wages stayed the same.

Housing and food got expensive for everyone, including healthcare workers. Healthcare workers missed the same performances, social events, and restaurants that everyone else was missing. Life got more expensive because everything including industry was disrupted by COVID. Healthcare wages stayed the same. Healthcare workers got sick. Sick leave was used up. Shifts were harder because healthcare was short staffed and there were more patients than before. And the patients were dying. And insurance didn’t want to pay for the treatments that patients needed, not that that was new, but it remained disheartening. And there was the need to wear masks at work. And to put on goggles and gowns and for healthcare workers to take extra time to protect themselves from infection. There was the risk of bringing COVID home after working in healthcare. Wages stayed the same.

People got sick. And healthcare workers got tired. Wages stayed the same. Hours were long. Vacations couldn’t be taken like they used to be taken. And just like their patients, healthcare workers got sick, tired, depressed, and anxious. Staff shortages increased in the hospitals and clinics.

People denied that COVID was real. People invented vaccines that helped prevent COVID infection. People refused to get vaccinated. People complained about wearing masks. People got tired of social distancing. People got sick. The intensive care unit was full. The psychiatric ward was full. The cardiac ward was full. Alcohol use disorder, diabetes, high blood pressure, and all the other medical conditions that always exist marched on because they don’t stop during a pandemic. Healthcare workers shouldered the workload of several workers each because some of their colleagues had left, some had died, and some were sick. Wages stayed the same.

In such an avalanche, how long would you have waited to change careers? For many, the answer was between 1 and 2 years.

~

There is always hope and healthcare has been grounded in hope since the beginning. But as a student so excited to become a physician I know that change must happen if hope is to materialize into lives saved. And for my sake and all the people who might need the hospital or a clinic in the coming years, let’s not make it take a healthcare collapse before we seriously consider how we might improve and restructure our healthcare system. I’d very much like some seasoned healthcare workers who are not completed burnt at my side when I start practicing as an independent physician because experience is gold in medicine. I’d also really like to have enough staff to care for patients without having to burn myself and burn my colleagues with the weight of too many lives in each of our two hands.

Surgeons

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I sat waiting for the surgeon I’d work with to arrive at the hospital. Being a medical student involves a lot of waiting. On the wall across from where I sat and next to my surgeon preceptor’s office was a wall of fame, of sorts, of surgeons gone by. The black-and-white photos caught my attention because every single surgeon depicted there was a white male. The irony was that most of the surgeons I would come to respect in the weeks to follow would fit neither or only one of the “white male” descriptors. The surgeon I was waiting for, for example, was neither white nor male. She would single-handedly show me what it meant to be an excellent surgeon.

The operating room is cold. The lights are stark. If you are helping with an operation you “scrub in” (which involves washing your hands in a special way and putting on sterile gloves and a sterile gown). Once scrubbed in, you maintain sterility the entire procedure which includes only touching sterile things and keeping your hands in front of you and between the level of your bellybutton and chest. Bathroom breaks and snack breaks aren’t an option for medical students in the operating room, so I tried my best to do those things before entering the room.

Once the patient is settled on the operating table, they’re put to sleep by anesthesia.  As soon as it’s confirmed that the patient is asleep, their eyelids are closed with tape to protect their eye structures and a tube is placed down their throat to help them breathe.

While the patient is asleep surgery unfolds. All surgeries are done with a team of people, the surgeon is only one member of that team, and the surgery is not successful without every team member. The patient is covered with drapes except for the area where the operation will occur. This is interesting because the humanness of the patient is lost. Their body becomes a workspace once the drapes are placed. It may sound disrespectful, but it isn’t. Rather, the drapes are meant to protect the sterile workspace and maintain patient modesty.

Surgeons are the artists of medicine. Much like carpenters and painters and jewelers and other craftspeople they make their living by using their hands. The difference, however, between surgeons’ hands and carpenters’ hands, for example, is stark. The surgeons’ hands are soft and their fingers nibble while the carpenters’ hands are rough and their fingers strong.

Surgery is all about feel and dexterity. Surgeons tie knots with thin thread to keep arteries from bleeding. They sew with curved needles using plyer-like instruments. During surgery, it’s the surgeon’s hands that impress. Their fingertips can feel the difference between disease and health in tissue. Their hands can somehow hold more tools than you thought possible.

Ask a surgeon about surgery and about the operating room and their eyes become bright. They smile. They draw pictures and use their hands to describe structures. They talk about the neat surgeries and bodies they’ve seen. They talk about how many operations they’ve done. Surgeons are like artists. They love their craft and exude a love for their studio (the operating room).

I would eventually join a surgery led by the surgeon I had waited for by the surgeon wall of fame. A resident and I were helping her. The resident was soon to finish and become an independent practitioner. The surgeon was busy operating; I was holding a camera (used to see inside the abdomen); and the resident was doing something else to help the surgeon. “People will not take you seriously because you are a small female,” the surgeon said to the resident. “Don’t be disheartened. Respect is earned.” The surgeon would go on to discuss the importance of appropriate financial compensation for your work and doing excellent work. I would hear this message about differences and respect several times during my surgery rotation. I would feel why multiple women ahead of me thought they needed to tell me and my colleagues this information. Yet, it wasn’t new information because I, like most others, didn’t make it through my 20s without learning how my different identities help and hinder me.

There are many things that you could die from if it wasn’t for surgeons. But, as lifesaving as surgery is, it is also fraught with risk. Your surgeon can kill you. Having life and death literally in one’s hands is not a light matter, and you see its weight on the shoulders of surgeons when you work with them. The riskiness of surgery is also why the road to becoming a surgeon is a long, hard one. It involves many years filled with unfortunately long workdays. Apart from a grueling training marathon, surgeons have high personal standards for their work. High standards coupled with hard training leave many surgeons with a robust ego.

Egos aren’t all bad. You want a confident, proud surgeon. This is because you want someone who is very good at what they do and who takes pride in their work to operate on you. However, egos can be detrimental too. Too much ego can lead to poor listening skills, lack of self-reflection, and a complete disrespect for others. High-quality surgeons are confident because they are good at their work and love it, proud because they save lives, and humble because they know they are human and will make mistakes. The best surgeons are not only confident, proud, and humble but also curious. Curiosity makes the best surgeons because they not only love operating but, also, dig to the bottom of their patients’ stories, investigate thoroughly any mistake or less-than-perfect outcome, and keep up on the latest research and recommendations in their field.

On our last day working together, the surgeon that made me understand surgery had time to sit with me in her office by the surgeon wall of fame. She gave me some advice and her philosophy on medicine. “It’s nice when patients appreciate your work. You saved their life. But, they don’t have to and that’s not why I do it. I like to help people,” she said. The conversation continued for a bit. “People talk about quality of life. I don’t think it’s fair to say that you don’t want to do surgery because of the quality of life. Quality of life is something you make. For example, right now I pick up lots of call [24-hour shifts]. I do it because I am well compensated but, also, because it is good experience. I like to help people… I like having the cases [surgeries]… But, I won’t pick up call forever. Right now, it makes sense… It’s all about tradeoffs. You can work less and then you make less money… You can set the terms of your work,” she said.

As I left the hospital after my last day working with her, I thought about the surgeon I’d worked with. She was a calm and patient teacher – something that is rare. She had saved many lives. She had seen the inside of the body many times. Her hands could tell the difference between a fat glob and a cancer by feel alone. I’d seen her talking to patients with a patience you don’t find in all surgeons. I’d seen her interacting with all levels of hospital personal with a respect and kindness that was genuine. I’d heard her talk through her clinical reasoning; it was thorough. I’d seen her do surgery; she excelled. She was exactly what I’d call an excellent surgeon. I would have no hesitation sending my patients or family to her because I knew she’d treat them well and operate with precision. She was the first surgeon to go on my mental surgeon wall of fame. After that first day waiting outside her office, I’d decided to construct my own wall of fame (for surgeons and other types of physicians) because the one I’d seen in the hospital was outdated.

The Psychiatric Rotation

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Disclosure: The patient story here was written with a patient I saw in mind, but the details have been changed to protect anonymity. The story is reflective of many patients I saw during my psych rotation and while working in the ED. You will note that I chose nonbinary pronouns. This is because brain illnesses (just like many illnesses of other organs) set in regardless of gender. Brain diseases, like many other diseases, are related to genetics, life experiences, and other social and environmental factors. A tricky aspect about brain diseases is that we aren’t exactly sure how most of them develop and we are quite far from having a cure.

I looked down at them lying on the stretcher in an ED bed. They were snoring quietly, and their face was neatly framed by their hair. Their eyes were closed, and they looked peaceful. I didn’t have much time to ponder the full circle that this scene represented and the eerie foreshadowing of the end of my psych rotation. They had received the magic 5-2, 5mg Haldol and 2 mg Ativan. Haldol is an antipsychotic that is sedating and Ativan a benzo that’s also sedating. In other words, the patient was chemically restrained. Put again, they were put to sleep for a short time to end their psychosis. And a scary psychosis it must have been as it was filled with delusions of people hurting them and murdering children. We shall call this patient The Singer.

I’d seen The Singer awake and stable during the first few days of my psychiatry rotation, weeks before I saw them sedated. When I first met them, they were being discharged from the psychiatric inpatient unit of the hospital. They’d been in the hospital for weeks. They’d been restrained many times. They’d spent a good chunk of their stay believing the hospital staff were hurting them. When I met them, they didn’t have those delusions. They were looking forward to finishing a song they’d started writing before entering the hospital. They were looking forward to going back to their job and were inspired to possibly start biking again. They were discharged from inpatient to home with quetiapine and an intensive outpatient treatment plan (dialectic behavioral therapy group sessions). Quetiapine is an antipsychotic. Did you know most drugs in its class are effective about 20%-50% of the time? That’s not a passing test grade. But, then again, 20% of patients helped is better than zero. And, of course, medications only have a chance of working if you take them.

As my psychiatry rotation marched along, I changed from inpatient psychiatry to outpatient psychiatry. I’d see The Singer in the outpatient setting too. I observed their dialectic behavioral therapy session (group therapy focused on developing social skills and strategies to manage emotions). I interviewed them at their medication follow-up meeting. At that meeting, they told us they’d stopped their quetiapine. They didn’t want to take it. They didn’t like it. We could not and were not going to force The Singer to take their medication. They complained about not being themselves when taking the medication. I couldn’t blame them because quetiapine is sedating and does sometimes make people feel flat, emotionless. The psychiatrist counseled The Singer on looking for signs that they might be slipping into psychosis again. The Singer identified not sleeping as one of the triggering factors. I worried for them. I worried their delusions would return if they weren’t on quetiapine.

After outpatient psychiatry, I transitioned to the consult service which determines if patients in the ED need psychiatric hospital admission and provides psychiatric evaluation of patients anywhere in the hospital. I was with the consult service when I saw the sedated version of The Singer in the ED. The Singer had been sedated because they were not safe. Their delusions of rape had returned. They were agitated and not taking care of themselves. They were making risky decisions. We hoped to help them by admitting them to the hospital.

I knew The Singer was a musician because the ED was the third setting in which I’d seen them; the first time I met them, they told me they were a singer.  I knew their living situation and their hobbies because I’d talked to them about them. I knew why they had stopped taking their medications and I knew that part of the reason their psychosis had returned was because they’d stopped taking quetiapine. After leaving their ED room, I drafted the psychiatry consult note that would be a record used as justification for involuntarily admission to the hospital for stabilization. We’d come full circle, The Singer and I. I started my time on psychiatry with them being discharged from inpatient treatment and I was ending my rotation with them being admitted again to inpatient treatment. Same cause. Similar presentation as last time. Had we made progress? How many times would The Singer repeat this cycle? I reflected on the fact that chronic illnesses are just that, a chronic struggle to be well. A chronic ebb and flow of good and bad days.

The ED consult note I wrote about The Singer was the first psychiatry note where I left the mental status blank and simply said they were chemically restrained at the time of consult. The mental status is the bulk of a psychiatry note. It’s where you summarize a patient’s emotions, thoughts, words, and behavior. A psychiatry note without a mental status exam is quite limited. Psychiatry is about talking to patients to understand their feelings, thoughts, and emotions. It is almost impossible to evaluate for feelings, thoughts, and emotions if you can’t or don’t speak to a patient. Sure, when patients aren’t sedated, you can observe them or try to use writing or sign if you can’t speak to them formally. But, talking is the core of psychiatry. Psychiatry is the one field of medicine that does not forget to ask the patient’s opinion. I reflected on that bit. It reminded me of the key lesson I hoped to remember on future rotations when time was crunched and my patience strained – you have to talk to patients in order to know their thoughts and story. It may sound simple. Perhaps it is. Perhaps the pile of labs and medications and interventions that occur in the hospital make it difficult to always remember that patients are people who got sick. The sickness doesn’t remove the fact that they might be a singer or a biker, it just adds another layer to them as a person. Seems straightforward. We’ll if it remains straightforward at the end of a 13-plus hour shift on surgery.