Busy Day, Memorable Moment

Today was a whirlwind. I'm on the Bone Marrow Transplant Service this month, and that alone would make any day busy. Today, though, was a little different.

The day started at 7:30 with me pre-rounding on my patients before going to see them on the floor an hour later. Rounds started at 9:15 am. Half way through rounds, the nurses from our apharesis unit let me know that one of my patients from a few months ago was on site for labs and hoped to see me. I made a note of this and continued with rounds.

Rounds finished at 10:30 am. I went to see the patient in apheresis. He's had a complicated course with advanced cancer and I was worried he might not make it through the Christmas holiday weekend. It was so good to see him! We talked about his family. He also told me that he'll be starting hospice care this week, which means today might be the last time we might see one another. I walked his wife and him to their vehicle to say goodbye one last time. It was truly the highlight of my day.

I returned to my desk at 11:30 am and got to work putting in orders from the morning, writing my morning progress notes, and preparing for afternoon clinic. I was slated to see 5 patients in the afternoon.

Clinic started at 1 pm and I hustled from one room to the next seeing each of the patients. In the midst of this, I got many pages and messages for my patients back on the BMT floor. We also had a patient come in with a PICC line needing to be removed. I had to figure out time in clinic to do this, too. Fortunately my attending could see that my work was stacking up and offered to see one more clinic patient on his own to lighten my load.

By 5 pm, I had seen 4 clinic patients, taken care of 5 floor patients, removed a PICC line, and helped get prescriptions set up for several of our patients that had already gone home. I had written a lot of notes and learned many things. But most imporantly, I had taken a pause midday to walk a very kind patient and his wife to the parking lot to say goodbye.