Paging Doctor Mom, Reality Calling
NOTE TO ALL: THIS IS PURE FICTION. Although there are parallels in this story, consider its characters the evil twins of the real people (if any) they represent. This story will continue for as long as I can last. It will address the difficulties of being a parent, particularly a mom, raising children in today's world of many changes. Here goes:
PAGING DOCTOR MOM...REALITY CALLING
As I park my car in the "Doctor's Only" lot, I can barely make out the lights shining through the emergency room doors through the heavy drizzle. Of course it didn't hellp much that my eyes felt like they'd been unscrewed from their sockets, scuffed with steel wool, and replaced off-center. The bags under them made it seem like they were protesting this abuse by threatening to pack up and leave on a one-way trip to Slovenia. All because of another sleepless night trying to calm the chaos that has become my family. The whining. The begging. The fighting. The nagging I had to do just to get the trash taken out. The confronting Alexis about the cigarettes I found in her backpack. The dealing with her screaming protests about "invasion of privacy." By the time I went to bed, my nerves were scrubbed raw by the adrenaline coursing several liters a minute through every vein.
I shake my head, half in disbelief that the hellish night even happened, and half to shake the memories of it from my mind like a dog shaking water from its coat. God, I have to get things together. I have a shitload of patients to see, some of them pretty sick. "Put on your game face, girl," I tell myself. "They can't know you're falling apart at the seams. I mean, how professional is that?"
I kick open the car door and get out into the drizzle. Great. I forgot my damn umbrella again. Of course, most of the 47 umbrellas in various parts of my house and garage have been completely disabled by treacherous hands of my kids, spokes bent and missing, fabric torn. Umbrella murderers. So it's gonna be another bad hair day. Perfect. I'll be a Don King look alike by noon. I straighten out the wrinkles in my white coat, try to dismiss the coffee stain on the lapel and walk across the parking lot to the entrance with an artificial air of confidence in my stride. Now I can see the lights beaming through the doors more clearly: the searchlight for an open-all-night 24/7 human equivalent of a Roach Motel beckoning death to participate in seeing that some customers check in, but don't check out.
Well now that thought makes me feel a damn spot better. I make my way through the groans, complaints, and bloodly bandages, and antiseptic smell of the ER to the main elevators of the hospital. "Come on, Victoria Anne Cramer, you can do this. Just another day at the office. They'll never suspect you feel like hell" I reassure myself. The elevators, thankfully empty this early in the morning, open on the third floor, allowing the smells, sounds, sights, and tempo of the Internal Medicine ward to assault my sense and my soul. Mrs. Pickering, the charge nurse, scurries importantly toward me before I can even cross the threshold. She has a clipboard clutched to her chest and a worried expression on her wrinkled and rouge heavy face. "Oh, doctor, you're just in time!" she says. Ms. Epstein is off her rocker today. That medicine you started on her last night must have made her delirium is much worse." What the hell. Pickering, affectionately know as the Wicked Witch of the North Wing, is always trying to find fault with what I do. Must be one of those "I-could-have-been-a-wonderful-doctor-if-I -had-made-it-into-med-school" types that hold eternal grudges for everyone wearing a white coat over scrubs or street clothes. "Sir Yes Sir! I'll get right on it," I reply with a brisk salute, taking a stab at comic relief. The scowl on her face showed she was not amused. I brace myself with a cup of 48 hour old coffee from the nurses station while I peruse Ms. Epstein's chart. I admitted her three days ago in an acute delirium, worried that she had had a stroke. Although she's eighty two, she's had a fairly uneventful medical history in all the ten years that she's been my patient. Her MRI looks good. Electrolytes, fine. Hmm. Calcium up a bit. I scribbled an order to check her free-ionized calcium in case her dementia was the result of a hyperactive parathyroid gland. Too much calcium can cause all sorts of problems, including mental confusion. Below that order, I purposely write, "Continue Zyprexa 1.25 mg. q hs as ordered" in defiance of Pickering's subtle accusation. Time to check in on Alma. With her chart in hand, I go to Ms. Epstein's room fully expecting her to be babbling senselessly, begging every passerby to rescue her from her restraints. The night before, she got up thinking she was back home--in 1930, and ran smack dab into her IV pole knocking herself and it down flat. But she didn't live up to that expectation. Instead, I see a perfectly coiffed southern lady sitting up straight, tied to her chair by a sheet wrapped around her chest, breakfast tray before her. I notice the 4 inch gash in the wall where the IV pole had shishkabobed it as well as the bruise on her left temple. Okay. I don't know what Pickering is talking about. She looks tons better. Hmm. So she's stirring her oatmeal with her fingers, big deal. Maybe that's a wacky family custom handed down for generations. My delusions are quickly dashed when, in her thick Alabamian drawl, she announces, "Hello, Dear. So glad you could make the party. You can set the bar up in the corner and tell the caterers I don't want them using my linens like they did the last time. It took me a week to get the stains out." "Hi Alma," I answer, I'm Dr. Cramer, remember me? I've come to see how you're doing this morning."
"Oh, yes, Dr. Cramer. I'm so glad you could make it. Do me a favor, dear, and tell that silly clown standing in the corner that he has to go. This is not a children's party, for goodness sakes, and I'm not giving him one red cent to do whatever the hell it is clowns do to terrorize youngsters."
Rational conversation was not in the stars, it appeared. So I tell her I want to examine her and she consents, obviously highly suspicious of any invitee bold enough to lift the back of her gown and explore her back with a cold stethoscope.
"Did you bring the pastries, Dear?" She asks.
"Yes, ma'am. they're in the back of the catering truck. I'll get them in a moment," I respond, deciding to give in to her fantasy world.
I prepare to do a fundoscopic exam on both eyes with my ophthalmoscope, I notice her face looks different somehow. Brighter. More alive and enthusiastic. Jesus, she's put her eyebrow pencil on so that her painted on brows hoover two inches above the real ones. 'Now that's gotta be a new index of dementia' I tell myself. I make a mental note to follow the distance between the penciled and real brows and see if there's any correlation to her degree of dementia. Just for grins. Something to brighten up the overwhelm that is my life. I bite my tongue to sqelch an imminent giggle when Pickering bursts into the room and breathlessly shouts, "Quit, Doctor. One of your children's teachers is callling. There's some sort of emergency." Oh shit. What next?