Looking back at my blog, I guess I had a couple of months where I was able to post and stay up to date. Unfortunately, September was quite the whirlwind. For a couple of weeks, I was carrying upwards of eight or nine patients at a time; at one point, I even had ten patients on my census (that was the day I worked from 7 AM to almost 8:30 PM; if I remember correctly, dinner consisted of sharing the chips, pretzels, and cookies that were at the nurses station that night). The quantity of patients was only exacerbated by the difficulty of treating some of them. There was a day when two of my patients got into a physical altercation because one of them called me a racial slur while the other felt a need to defend my honor, and in a completely unrelated incident a third patient (in the process of being treated for mania) ended up taking off his T-shirt and roaming the halls verbally threatening staff and patients alike. Fortunately, as I was told by my colleagues, the workload on inpatient psychiatry always seems to come in waves, and it appears that this most recent wave has passed with my census last week averaging just two or three patients. In some ways, I'm grateful to have gone through the gauntlet of September. There's no way I want to have ten patients again, but at least I now know I can handle the situation.
There isn't much else to report, I suppose. I learned on Friday that tomorrow is Columbus Day, which (being a federal holiday) means a day off at the VA. That pleasant surprise opens up a day of possibilities ranging from trying the culinary offerings of Dayton to simply staying at home. Looking ahead, there are only two more weeks left on this inpatient psychiatry rotation. I move onto four weeks of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, which is all outpatient, which means a more predictable schedule, which means possible visits to Ann Arbor and a definite visit to California for a wedding.
That's about it for now. Not much in the way of deep insightful musings I'm afraid, but getting back into the swing of blogging makes me feel better. For a second I was afraid I hadn't written anything during the entire four months of inpatient psychiatry and was glad to realize I had actually checked in during August. It's been less than two months since that post, but it sure feels like it's been longer. In the process of thinking of a title for this post, I thought "Surviving September" had a nice ring to it, mostly because it was how I felt during most of the month, but now I'm ready to move from surviving to thriving. I guess you could say I'm already on my way. I know that one of these days I will re-read this post, remember the wave that was September, and be glad of how far I've come. Glad to be back, and thanks for reading!
[College football: one of the ways I survived September]