Short Call

This is Day Three. Short call means we take new patients from 7am-4pm, with a cap of four new patients. Sometimes you get all four first thing in the morning from the "night float" resident, who is there to admit any new patients who come after 7pm when the long call team stops taking admisssions, and to make sure the rest of the patients don't die in the middle of the night. Other days you get the four dribbling in throughout the day.

I was assigned one of the new patients today, a young lady whose skin is calcifying. It's a very sad disease. She can't open her mouth completely because the skin at the corners of her mouth are calcified, and she walks with a limp because she can't bend her leg due to the calcification. Patients with her variation of this disease supposedly have no reduction in life expectancy, although it's a restricted and not-so-fun life. However, patients with the diffuse form of this disease have a very poor prognosis owing to organ involvement in addition to the skin problems, and most often die because their lungs lose capacity to expand and contract. There's no cure for this disease, so we do all we can to give supportive care. I hope my patient doesn't go from her limited end of the disease spectrum to the diffuse end. She seems really nice and I hope she can leave soon. There was another patient we had recently who had the diffuse form. It came on suddenly a few months ago when she had her baby. She was otherwise healthy, but has since developed calcified skin and organs everywhere, and her skin turned nearly black everywhere too. Her baby isn't going to have a mommy soon.

Anyhow, after we finish rounds in the morning, we work up our new patients and treat and monitor our old patients. It's not as long a day as long call, because we only accept new patients until 4pm, then we are generally able to interview the new patients, admit them, order some labs and studies, and finish their paperwork by 8-9pm. We even got done early enough today for me to hang out with Darron and try out his neighborhood Japanese restaurant. He liked everything we ordered! I'm so proud of my newly Japanophilic baby!

Okay... off to study up on skin-calcifying disease.