Green hills

Dr. Signout is on holiday! And instead of lying in bed all day and reading Vanity Fair as she had no small urge to do, she has shuttled off to enjoy a cool-weather summer holiday in the southwest of Ireland.
When I’m on holiday, you’re on holiday. No hospital politics, no patient-family shenanigans, no elegantly structured, economical-yet-lyrical [...]

Women behaving badly

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Today has been an unbelievably frustrating day in the hospital, but I don’t want to bring anyone down. In an effort to promote peace, harmony, and blogular happiness, I’m going to instead write about something everyone can get excited about: [...]

Tragedy

I have heard through the grapevine that certain people are not so interested in reading what I write here because it is, and I quote, “too sad.”
It’s never occurred to me that my job is especially sad. Yes, I’m surrounded by sick people, and yes, most cheese danish to be found in our hospital is [...]

Post-operative complications

Since I came on the medicine service, my team has been taking care of a man who because of one of his unfortunate afflictions I will call Mr. Scrotum. Mr. Scrotum is a 70-something man who came to the hospital with an infected prosthetic knee joint. He had surgery to clean it out, then came to our [...]

Broken

It was bound to happen sooner or later: I finally broke someone.
Last Thursday, we admitted an 84-year old lady with bad disease of her kidneys and their vasculature. Her kidneys were too sick to make urine, making her a good candidate for hemodialysis. (In hemodialysis, a patient’s blood is circulated through a big machine that sucks waste and excess fluid out of the blood–sort [...]