Addicted to Emergency

I did it again.

In the words of a wise Nigerian Pharmacist, "Medicine is your calling".
I received a text from a fellow med student this morning saying that the ED was short of its boss and that it would be a great opportunity to go help out. And so, I decided to go down there and check it out. As soon as I sunk my teeth into my first patient, I knew that I wasn't going to leave for a while. In this case it was 10pm and I was supposed to go back to Melbourne - 3 hours drive away.

There's something about the emergency department that brings a sense of togetherness to those who work there, especially when you know everyone on a first name basis. To me, the atmosphere of ED reminded me of some of my fondest childhood memories, being  in "after-school care" or hanging around the front gates of school waiting for mum or dad to pick me up after work. There's something about the ED which wants to make me linger and not care about what is happening in the rest of the world. Perhaps, it's the lights and lack of windows which everyone talks about, where no-one has any idea of what time of day it is until they walk out the door. Perhaps, it's this sense that the staff have tried really hard to make the department their home to help them cope with the stress of their work when seeing patients. I'm not sure. Whatever it is, ED always feels like home to me.

The hardest thing for me this year to sort out, was that things continue to happen with you or without you. That no one person could fully appreciate everything that occurs in the hospital. I've thought about this purely from an exam vs. reality perspective. This is especially after spending a good top half of the year entrenched in getting as much clinical exposure as possible. The result was a poor paper-based exam outcome. Sure I was really good at talking to patients, but I really lacked the knowledge for academic success. This half of the year I felt better at integrating these two worlds, as I catch up in the book study department. Just let it all go, Chris.

The thing about ED is that there is often so much distraction that it is hard to let go of what it has to offer. The only thing that holds me back is tiredness. I wanted to know about the patients I saw. I wanted to know whether I called the same shots that my senior colleagues did. I want to know that the patient in the resus bay is stable and made it through the night. It's hard, because sometimes I might even lose sleep over the worrying.

On Friday, I was so busy trying to help out that I totally did not realize that my phone died. I was so caught up that I decided to change my plans to go to Melbourne without telling anyone. And as a result upset the apple-cart, causing everyone to worry. Not a good look. There are just so many things going on in my life, that I lack the ability to organize it all. Sometimes I wish that I had no strings attached and could do anything that I wanted whenever I wanted.

Obviously my other life commitments (parents, sister, girlfriend, friends) were more important and it was a simple temptation to sacrifice these, when you're caught up in the action of emergency - after all I am tending to other people's emergencies, right? Breaking promises over this excuse, is probably going to cost my the trust of others for a while. Maybe I have a problem with commitment, but why does it always happen when I'm doing something altruistic? I don't know. People weren't happy at me, but I'm okay about it. I guess I'll keep trying to make them understand.