Rebound

The art of medicine is the ability to rebound.

I put in my first chest tube all by myself today.  I started off by dropping the kelly on the floor, which is probably the single most important instrument in the whole process.  I rebounded though- I looked at what I had left and made do.  And I placed a BEAUTIFUL chest tube.

Yesterday, while rounding in the morning, we visited a patient who was suddenly gasping for breath.  He had to be urgently intubated in order to keep breathing.  It was fast and furious for 15 mintues while we crash intubated him.  It was exciting, exhilarting and terrifying.  And then I had to go talk to a whiny lady about her poop.  Not my favorite kind of rebound, but it was a rebound nonetheless.

A few weeks ago, I was brought to tears by a nurse who yelled at me for walking into the hospital with wet hair.  She insisted that I was irresponsible and unprofessional for not leaving enough time to prepare myself for work.  I bit my tongue as I looked out the window behind her- at the DOWNPOUR of rain that I had just run threw to get to the hopsital.  That's why my hair was wet, jerkface.  I walked away and cried in the bathroom for exaclty 60 seconds (yes, I timed it because I'm that weird).  And then I rebounded. A few hours later I was on a flight to harvest a lung for transplant.

This morning, my attending made me feel incredible inept and useless by critisizing every single move that I made with the video camera in his surgery.   Twenty minutes later, my resident was talking about his favorite chewy candy and insisted that it was called "Mike & Dyke's".  That kept me smiling pretty much all day.  Rebound.

It's probably all of medicine, but especially in surgery- I think the ability to rebound is KEY.  Key for my sanity, as well as my ability to do my job.