Ladybruin24@ucla.edu
“Taxi!... 1st Avenue and 27th Street, Bellevue Hospital, please.” It was one year later and I found myself just as I was before at 7 am, Hello Kitty pen in one hand, blue notebook in the other, and a red Bellevue ER polo with khaki pants and black Vans. Except this time, I wasn’t commuting to UCLA, I was hitching a cab in New York City.
I had no idea what I was getting myself into, but I was ready to embark on a new adventure in a big city. I was doing a medical internship at one of New York City’s famous hospitals, Bellevue Hospital Center.
After leaving school one week early to start the program, I was majorly stressed during finals week. I had to watch all of my lectures online, study, and on top of it all, attend a mandatory orientation week all day 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. The end of the week came and I found myself in the hospital taking my two final exams in Organic Chemistry and Life Sciences 2 back to back for 6 hours. I was relieved that it was over by 9 p.m., and was excited for my Catheterization Laboratory shift the next morning.
It was my first shift and I did not know what to expect. I put on a set of scrubs, a pair of gloves, and a mask. I couldn’t step into the room without putting on this heavy body suit to protect myself against the x-rays and huge machinery. Even though I knew I might see something gross, I ended up watching surgeons place a battery pack inside a person’s heart. I was amazed at the whole procedure, but what was even more gratifying was that the surgeon allowed me to stand literally 6 inches away from the chest and explained every procedure as he thawed and burned the skin away and located the exact place in the chest cavity (heart) that the pack would go. I felt so privileged that the surgeon would stop every now and then to explain to me everything that was going on.
Even though I was working 6 hour shifts approximately 3-6 times a week, I wanted to absorb all the experience and learning that I could, so I always volunteered for extra hours. I knew that I had no idea when I would be back in New York City and wanted to make the best of it all.
My next shift was the Operating Room. This time I had to put on scrubs, slippers, and a hair net. My jaw dropped when I saw my first open-heart surgery. The beautiful God-given muscular organ pumping oxygenated and deoxygenated blood in and out was breathtaking. Everything I had learned since elementary school just came to life in my eyes. The Superior Vana Cava and the Aorta was as visible as the eye can see!
It was not until the 2nd week that I was introduced to the love of my life: Adult Emergency Services (AESI). When I walked into the unit, the world literally stopped moving. I was in a daze while everything else seemed to be revolving around me. Everything I ever dreamt of, everything I ever heard or read about, even everything I ever saw on TV, came to life. Doctors were busy giving orders; everyone in scrubs, running around helping patients, essentially saving lives. This ended up being my favorite shift, and I found myself running back to it so many times, even if I was on another shift.
One of the craziest things that happened during this trip was when I was on a Social Work shift passing by the Adult Emergency Services; a triage nurse asked if I could do an EKG on a patient. For a second I thought I should get another volunteer from that unit, but I just decided to do it instead. As the results were printing out, I went crazy in my head when I saw the PQRST like never before, and I knew this patient was Tachycardic. I immediately rushed over to the nurse and handed her the EKG results, she instantly showed the attendee who was on board. One of the teams then hooked up the patient to the monitors and astonishingly this patient’s heart was beating 200 beats per minute! I realized that if I had decided to wait for another volunteer to come and participate instead of me, the time that would have passed by could have been enough to place this patient in a great deal of danger.
Everything in general was a crazy, once-in-a-lifetime experience that I will undoubtedly never forget. I even got to witness two autopsies, one which had maggots crawling all over the body with a leg chewed off. Riding an ambulance for a day with an EMT, splinting a patient’s sprained finger, irrigating a patient’s wound after surviving a motorcycle accident, and even seeing what ring worms looks like. One of the most challenging things to see was a patient die in the trauma room after a nurse is hovering over him doing chest compressions after failing to successfully defibrillate him. This allowed me to learn that sometimes doctors are not able to save a life, but actually witness a tragedy that they must somehow overcome.
It feels like the entire experience lasted as long as a blink of an eye. I met amazing people whom I will never forget and I made lasting friendships and connections. Even now that the program is done, Bellevue is still there. All of the staff and residents are continuously working all day every day, and I truly miss the cycle. More than anything you gain from the program, besides the medical terminology and the valuable experience, are friendships and connections with amazing people who have interesting stories from all over the world.
1 comment:
Your blog keeps getting better and better! Your older articles are not as good as newer ones you have a lot more creativity and originality now keep it up!
Post a Comment