Hospitalized

My husband and I had COVID right around Christmas last year. Thanks to the vaccines, I didn’t feel extremely ill—just some aches and pains, coughing, sinus pain, and shortness of breath. I called my primary care provider, and the person on call said to just treat the symptoms. She prescribed cough medicine and an antibiotic for the apparent sinus infection.

A week or so later, I saw my primary for something else, and I told her, “I don’t think my leg is supposed to look like this.” It had become swollen and painful, and my foot was dusky. The ultrasonographer in the practice was gone for the day. So my primary called a colleague in the ER who said she should bring me down there. My husband was waiting in the car, since we had planned to go out to dinner after my appointment.

A few years ago, I lost my balance and ended up on the floor with what turned out to be a broken shoulder, multiple bruises, and a semi-concussion. Because my white blood cell count was elevated, the admitting doctor kept me in the hospital for four days on a saline IV, since an attempt to put me on an antibiotic gave me hives. I’d consistently had bad reactions to other antibiotics in the past, so he relied only on the saline to clear my system.

I was in bad pain, since pain medicine makes me throw up or gives me other debilitating symptoms. So I managed through those four days with Tylenol, cool packs, and my arm in a sling. The orthopedist sent by the admitting doctor after my scans were done felt the break would bond on its own if it was kept stable. I was terrified.

As a primary care physician, I like my patients’ charts to be updated, without redundant or irrelevant information. So, before initial appointments with patients I “inherited” when I joined my current practice, I take some time to “clean up their chart.”

When patients have complex medical histories and medication lists, cleanup is challenging. But worth it. This process helps me build a two-dimensional picture of the patient, their disease trajectory, relationship with specialists, and longitudinal overall health. When I meet the patient, I can then focus on listening and observing and understanding them three-dimensionally.

It was Friday around 8 p.m., and my husband had the worst headache of his life. Worst headache of your life means you go to the ED, I informed him snappily, all the while mulling over my suicide plan. That’s how my husband and I ended up on a Friday night date at the hospital.

Starting to see hospitalized patients saved my life.

I can’t count the number of times I thought about quitting during my preclinical years of medical school. But in India, quitting or switching careers felt like suicide. I hated dissecting dead people, pithing living frogs, peering into microscopes, dropping chemicals into a terrified bunny’s eyes. But I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to the medical world, so I slogged on, earned good grades, and eventually reached the clinical part of medical school.

I watch the ceiling lights pass by as I am wheeled to the operating theater. I have made such trips before: Over the 20-odd years I’ve worked here I’ve had an assortment of surgical procedures, ranging from a cholecystectomy to the repair of a half-torn shoulder tendon.

At 4 a.m. on post-op day one, I woke up in the living room recliner, my temporary recovery bed. My dog had his paw on my leg. That’s when I felt it: wetness. I reached down and found blood.

The surgical drains were overflowing. My incision was bleeding. I was beginning to feel lightheaded. As an emergency medicine physician, I knew that this was not normal.

It was a regular duty day at the neonatal ward when I received a frantic call from my intern colleague. “Come quickly,” she said, “We just received a critical case from the OBGY unit.”

I rushed over. She showed me a tiny, fragile newborn—barely alive.

“How far along was the pregnancy?” I asked.

“Twenty-two weeks,” she replied.

The year was 2008, and I was hospitalized for extensive pre-op testing. Awaiting me was a long and risky operation to try to save part of my left kidney. A well-meaning but errant interventional radiologist had ablated it with alcohol. Not just once, but twice!

Dad and I sit in the conference room at Hanover General Hospital when the surgeon knocks on the door and enters. “You must be Eugenia Miller’s husband,” he says to my father.

“Yes, I’m Harry,” my father murmurs while he stands and extends his hand in the direction of the doctor.

“And I’m her daughter, Kathy,” I say as I offer my hand.

“I wish I had better news to share with you,” the doctor states as he looks in the direction of the window at the end of the room.

As I approached retirement after 35 years of practicing head and neck surgical oncology, my new cardiologist suggested that the daily baby aspirin I had been taking for atrial fibrillation was no longer appropriate. “You should consider a convergent procedure,” he said. “A team of surgeons creates scars on the back of the heart near the left atrium and the pulmonary veins. Then they place a clip across your left atrial appendage, and I do an endocardial ablation a few weeks later. It should help.”

My husband was recently hospitalized for a long and arduous cancer surgery. A few days post-surgery, one of his nurses told us that she had to leave early, but that a blonde lady would be coming in momentarily to relieve her. Sure enough, this other nurse comes in, having overheard this comment, and says, “I’m the blonde lady.” My husband noticed that every woman in there was blonde: the aforesaid nurse, the respiratory therapist and the physical therapist. My husband said, “Every woman in here is blonde. I guess it’s not a good time for a (dumb) blonde joke.” Everyone laughed.