6:55 am. Twenty-five minutes into my day. One over-priced starbucks coffee.. maybe 20 orders.. 5 hood checks.. 7 phone calls.. 3 mind-numbing questions.. and a half-dozen legitimate ones. And then, 1 page. One cardiac arrest page to my code blue pager. Sheer adrenaline, in the best and worst possible ways.
I blend myself into the herd of residents, interns, nurses, anesthesiologists running to the patient's room. I have to push people out of my way. Literally. Physically. Push them with my oversized CPR arrest drug box. And then plead for a nurse to clean off a corner of a table so I might have an ounce of room to dose out medications. Medications, that I might add, the doctor-in-charge has been yelling for since before I stepped in the door. But today there is no corner of the table available.. because this table is covered in blood from the patient's coronary IV line. So I sit. Indian-style like a 5 year-old child on her first day of kindergarten, and I begin. Rapidly, efficiently, effectively.. and frantically.. drawing up dose after dose of medication after medication to keep this failing patient alive. This failing patient who happens to be 6 months old. This is how I started today: a day in the life of a children's hospital pharmacist.
This isn't everyday. This is just today.. this Saturday.. with this little boy. As it was last week.. with a different patient.. a little girl.
Today's patient didn't survive the arrest. But as I walk back to the pharmacy, ready to check more amoxicillin syrup and sign more heparin syringes, I pass by the room of last week's patient. She did survive, and she's sitting in bed playing with an ugly little stuffed elephant. She'll go home next week. She takes the sting away, if only for a moment.
And as I walk through the pharmacy door, my tech calls out "there's a nurse on the phone wondering if sodium chloride is compatible with normal saline." ...This is a day in the life.
