July Intern: ‘Potassium is Either 4 or 14’

KEARNEY, NE – Residency is full of minute details and keeping these all together is hard when you’re just starting out. So no surprise that brand new intern Katie Tonic at Kind Samaritan Hospital could not exactly recall if her patient’s Potassium was 4 or 14 during her very first rounds.

She had further difficulty reporting if he needed dialysis or had some paralysis and had to dig through the chart to see if her patient had Nocardia or Procardia. She was pretty sure that the patient was taking Zyprexa or Celexa or Ranexa and had some issues with his adnexa. He had an infected stoma or maybe worsening glaucoma.. perhaps an enlarging hematoma being invaded by a lymphoma. I think i’m going into a coma.

The patient was admitted to Urology with a Medicine consult, cause that can be a thing on your first day of residency. And Ophtho and Allergy consults would come any minute now. The patient would quit smoking and start a full exercise program immediately upon discharge.

He was either Full Code or Half Code or had a malignant lymph node. The patient was on normal saline and with a mutated gene and should be taking Thiamine. He was of-course allergic to morphine. But also to Tylenol, Aspirin, Norco, Apples, Bees and everything else that was not Dilaudid.

The next 12 months are sure to suck.