When you're me, and you've been going on duty at the medical ICU for the past four weeks, you get to see front row seats to fate's gala performances.
Stuff just happens.
And it's crazy when it happens to you.
Just when you go off duty, the weirdest things happen -- arrhythmias (really bad rhythms of the heart that believe me, you don't want to be facing alone), spontaneous pneumothorax in a patient with a chest tube, an arrest.
Just when you're done updating an attending on how unremarkable the night went for his or her patient, she crashes and you get to call them again on how you had to stick a tube down their patient's throat to help them breathe.
Just when you say the pupils are equal, the consultant comes by 30 minutes after and orders a CT scan because the pupils are not reactive to the light shone in her eyes.
When these crazy things happen, you just want to smack yourself on the side of your head.
You can only do so much to not look like an incompetent fool and worse a liar, but that's how it plays out sometimes.
Stuff happens.
Like inserting a line a really swollen, twice-my-leg-sized arm after a gazillion attempts by trained IV therapists.
You make the right call in diagnosing the patient and you silently beam, puff your chest out a little, when the attending tries to find something to chastise you about.
You don't give a crap about critics' opinion of your progress notes when you know all the patients admitted are stable because you know their cases in and out.
Times that you actually order ahead for something the consultant thinks of two days after.
That's just how it is.
Stuff happens.
Just simple random stuff.
Fate is truly a funny wicked thing.
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