I finished out my rotation on pediatric surgery this past
weekend, leaving my kids in the capable hands of my co-resident. I was sad to
leave pediatric surgery. The more I learn, the more I love taking care of the
little ones. I was lucky to land in the world of peds this past rotation, as it
was one of the few busy surgical services while the hospital was in the grips
of COVID.
Services are slowly starting to test the waters once again,
and over the next couple of weeks we expect to see elective cases start to
resume. As much as we want to see it, we refrain from celebrating too soon. The
cases of COVID-19 are still on the rise in Westchester and death toll now way
past 1000. However, with the nice weather recently, has come a dramatic
increase in trauma… as is expected. Motorcycle crashes polka-dot the
Westchester motorways starting in the spring and last until the days grow short
and cold again. The hospital making room for the influx of trauma combined with
the elective cases, and we find ourselves playing musical beds with patients
half the night while on call. Kind of feels like the good old days… like, from
two months ago.
I have now transitioned to a brand new COVID unit under
surgical critical care. My patients are not in the ICU, but rather they are
those 20% few that have survived the COVID storm, and stabilized enough to be
transferred out of the ICU. What we saw
and assumed 1-2 months ago, is now very different from what we find ourselves
practicing. At one point, it appeared as if intubation was a death sentence in
COVID. There was only one way out of the ICU once the COVID storm hit. But
there are now those that have proved us wrong, they have hung on, for whatever
reason, and survived the storm. Procedures that sounded outrageous for these patients
are now practiced daily, specifically tracheostomies and bronchoscopies. They
are, afterall, patients and deserve the same care and treatment as anyone else
including airway care. Granted some of them have emerged on the other side
having weathered the storm a bit more graciously than others, but either way,
they come to us needing to be packaged up nicely with bows tied for discharge to
their next level of rehabilitation.
Much Love and Prayers.
No comments:
Post a Comment