When I write, it tends to be in times when I'm feeling a little more on the down side. There's a lot of reasons for that, I suppose, but I don't really want to get into them. While I was driving to the station after work today, I started thinking about the past year of my life in a different way: in terms of the patients - people - I helped.
It was pretty awesome.
There was the 40 something male with incredibly slurred speech and dizziness resulting from a stroke that we treated with TPA and sent to a larger hospital where he had an embolectomy and resolved symptoms as a result.
The guy having a heart attack, trying to joke it away before he was sent to the cath lab.
The 25 year old female who ultimately died, but was saved long enough for her family to say good bye - and whose organs helped save several other people.
The patients I treated as a student who asked if I did home care because they liked the way I treated them so much.
There are plenty of irritating stories, plenty of ridiculous stories, plenty of plain old stupid stories. . . but at the end of the day, when I think about what I get the privilege to call my job, I am astounded, grateful and so incredibly happy. This is the coolest stuff on earth, no doubt about it - even if I do get overwhelmed at times.
