Shrink

It was a hectic and exhausting week at Green Acres, and one with several firsts. My first serious Tarasoff situation. The first patient to successfully grab me by the necktie. My first patient with neurosyphilis (or so I thought, and so she’d been told by doctors at another hospital—although the next day we learned there had been a “clerical error”, and her test results were not positive after all. So, another first: Telling a patient, “Remember how you have syphilis? Well, good news…”)

Thursday night I spent in the bowels of Medical Records dictating discharge summaries on a stack of charts that reached from the floor to my chin. The ladies in Medical Records kindly left me a box of chocolate to lure me in.

By Friday so many patients had come, gone, or been transferred that I couldn’t even figure out how many I had under my care. I think it’s about time to fade again.