Here's to hoping I get to write on this here blog at times other than on call. It's 3:53 AM on Sunday morning here in Western Massachusetts. Today has been a long day of patient care. On-call, I only cover three services which is very nice. Most people cover trauma and such, but I have my own service plus two others. When I began the day, we only had about 10 patients. Over the morning, I discharged about 5 of them. However, for some reason the nurses discharged the patients before I could go talk with them, but gosh which doctor actually gets to speak with a patient before they leave the hospital right? (that's sarcasm) So then my list was cut in half plus the patients from my other services that I cover on call. I even discharged someone else's patient. However, now my list is twice as long as it was this morning. That means I've taken all the patients I discharged plus ten more. SWEET! Overall it isn't all that bad, plus Dr. O and Dr. M are here which makes life a bit easier.

At noon I put in a right internal jugular central venous catheter under ultrasound guidance. This is cool, because we use the machine that doctors use to look at babies. However, we use it to see the internal jugular vein and carotid artery. It makes it much easier to put the catheter in the vein. Then the catheter is advanced to just above the right atrium. Then we can give the patient drugs easier, monitor central venous pressure (volume status), and give TPN (total parenteral nutrition...or nutrition through the IV). Oops, about to go to OR. More later...