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@Brooklyn
Memoir (10)@
The Longest Day
It was in January, 1981. I was rotating through the medical wards. I could not deal with the senior resident very well, which made the routine work very stressful. I had many severely ill patients in addition, then.
The sickest patient was a middle aged African-American man, post-operative with colon cancer who had developed an infection and was receiving antibiotics therapy. He was finally discharged, but one week after discharge he developed fever again and was brought back to ER. He came back to the medical ward as my patient again. My 33 hour work day, every third day, was going on as usual. My state of mind became very unstable at this point.
I was not on call on that particular day. I came home at 5 pm and drove to the shopping mall in my neighborhood to help lift my spirits and change my mood. After the shopping I came back to the parking lot to find my car stolen. It was an old Chrysler, but all tires had been changed new couple of weeks before. I called the insurance company and reported to the police, and then called car rental company to rent a car from the following day.
It's easy to write this now, but it took a lot of time then, since this kind of incident occurred for the first for me. I really panicked.
At 6 am next morning, the usual time I got up, I didn't feel like leaving my bed at all. Deep inside in my consciousness was perhaps the fact that I was on call on that day and once I left home I would have to work for 33 hours straight. I literally could not wake up that morning. At 8 am, the phone rang. Since it was probably from the hospital, I didn't take it. After that, the phone rang every hour, but I left it alone. In the evening, the door bell rang. I had to answer it this time. It was the chief resident, Orly, a Philipino-American. He visited my apartment as part of his responsibility to check on the residents who were absent. I told him what had happened for the last 24 hours. He told me, g Don't worry, Tomoyuki. It could happen to any residents, even to American residents.
What's important is how to follow the incident. I'll call the medical ward and tell them that you are sick today and get a substitute. You have to call yourself too, OK. I'll arrange that you can take one week vacation till the end of this month and make your next rotation to the VA hospital which is supposed to be mellower rotation. No problem." Orly seemed God-like to me then. I've kept in touch with him ever since.
I became much tougher mentally from this ordeal. I also became more sensitive to the signs of mental fragility appearing in onefs face and behavior, which perhaps has made me more generous towards other people.