There’s some names that everyone knows. A patient that has been at the hospital months on end, just about every resident has been involved in some aspect of his or her care. Or a patient, for good or bad, who is a frequent flier on the surgical service.
This particular gentleman is the later example, a frequent flier. Every couple of weeks he shows up as a direct admit to the floor. Sent in from clinic with abnormal lab values, or another virus. He usually walks in with his suitcase, “here to check in again!” So, when I saw his name on the ICU census, I was very surprised. Considering how closely he is followed, anything and everything should be caught in early stage. Soon enough to stop it in its tracks. Evenso, he’s there, critically ill, fighting for his life as he does everyday just now with higher stakes. I was then even more surprised to hear his name mentioned by my Thoracic surgery attending. “They want a lung biopsy, so you’re going to do it Christy. No one is going to take this from you. A lot of the bad stuff is in the region of the lingua, so we’ll take a wedge of that. And this one’s yours Christy!” At least that’s what she told me. Another story when we talked with the ICU team. “Absolutely not!!!” They seem to be under the impress he’s way too critical to survive even leaving his room let alone allowing us to position him on his side and collapse a lung to do surgery. I got consent from the surrogate just in case, we do get to go.
1) Will we get to go?
2) Will he be okay?
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