in for the high jump

sometimes patients can follow you when you rotate to another discipline. sometimes this can be tragic. sometimes it can be funny. and yes sometimes it can be both.
the patient was tired of life. he addressed this problem by taking a massive amount of a large variety of pills and very nearly ended it all. however the internists would hear nothing of it and fought tooth and nail for his life, partly because of the efforts of a certain house doctor who really invested of himself to pull the patient through. every day, while the patient was in icu he visited and tried the best he could to support him. he even started learning the fine art of ventilation by simply observing the daily settings of the ventilator by his seniors. when the patient went to the ward he could be more directly involved. he did all the necessary blood work on the patient, but also consulted both the psychiatrist and the psychologist. he even spent time just trying to encourage the patient.

but in a certain sense it was a bit of a one sided relationship. you see the patient wasn't overly delighted by the fact that the suicide attempt had been thwarted and he went as far as to take it out on the poor house doctor. i suppose it was inevitable. you see the house doctor was the face that the patient associated with the hospital and the doctors and the house doctor was therefore the target for his resentment. but to his credit, the hapless doctor didn't show signs of this getting him down, although inwardly he was struggling a bit. as you can imagine, he was only too glad to rotate from the internal medicine wards on the 4th floor down to the lowly surgical wards on the 2nd floor. unfortunately his fellow house doctors rotated with him. even more unfortunately surgeons are not know for their finely developed sense of understanding and sympathy of emotional issues.

we were standing on the balcony of the doctor's tearoom. the fellow house doctors were having a bit of a go at this poor house doctor about the fact that despite his best efforts the patient ended up hating him the most. the surgical registrars gave their five cents worth about not investing too much time and effort into someone who just didn't care and essentially didn't want to live. the house doctor took it all in his stride and even laughed at the whole situation. yet even then he defended the actions of the patient, talking about decreased personal responsibility due the a defined psychiatric disease. the surgeons, who essentially stand by the dictum that if you can't fix it with a knife then there is nothing wrong with the patient, ragged the poor house doctor even more. the house doctor smiled and answered.

"anyway it doesn't matter anymore. i've been rotated to surgery and it is unlikely the patient will follow me here." with that he turned to gaze forlornly out over the balcony..... just in time to see his patient whizz past in his brief but rapid journey to the concrete floor below. life was still too much for him and he had jumped.

the house doctor rushed down and commenced the resus. in the end he was also the one to call it. the patient had tried to follow him, but had overshot the mark a bit. the words of the surgical registrar which had been shouted to him as he charged out the ward probably didn't help with his overall demeanour:-

"now at last there is something wrong with your patient."