A little break after a rough week...

So, I had my first patient die on Friday. It was an awful experience, truly awful. We worked so hard on him on both Thursday and Friday, gave him a massive amount of blood products, and even did a minor surgical procedure in his room because he was so unstable... Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, he met his inevitable demise at 1330 on 21 March 2008. CPT Corbin and I were devastated right along with his family.

The universe must have been sending out signals about my rough day, because 1/2 an hour after my patient died, Will called me from Iraq... Quite ironic, but very welcome. Talking to him made me feel better, but I still miss him like crazy. Sometimes talking to him makes me miss him more, but I would never pass up the opportunity to talk to him since I get to hear his voice so infrequently. He has been deployed for six months now, and has nine more to go. He should be home on leave in October, so I have something to count down to in the near future.

Later in the day, Geoff took pity on me and was nice enough to fly up from Philly to hang out with me on Friday night and Saturday. We stopped by the White House (which is much smaller than I remember it, but then again, I am bigger now than I was in the eighth grade... Ha-ha) and went out to dinner with a classmate of mine and her friend at Old Ebbitt Grill on Friday night, then walked down the mall a little. On Saturday, we headed up to Ft. Belvoir to get my uniform from the tailor at Military Clothing and Sales, then went to Buca for an early dinner before I got him back to DCA to fly home. To commemorate the event, we took a self-photo on the metro... Ha-ha. I think he is going to come up again the second week of April for a few days so we can get out and see some of the sights. I haven't really gotten out that much, and it has been years since he has been to DC, so we are going to make a real effort to see some of it before I leave. Plus, it will be a few years until we will see each other again. We will see how our schedules work out...

In terms of school, we officially have three weeks to go, and I couldn't be happier. We start our clinical rotation at Fairfax INOVA hospital tomorrow evening. It is a level I trauma facility and we get to rotate though the trauma, neuro, and cardiac ICUs, as well as the ER, so needless to say I am excited about that. On the other hand, I am so tired of spending 19 hours a day either doing patient care, or preparing for the next day. Hawaii will be such a relaxing treat after all of the hard work I have been doing! Anyhow, speaking of school, I must get back to preparing the rest of my clinical objectives since they are due by the end of the week...

The end is so close I can taste it!

66H8A (in training) out...