The Medical Floor Revisited

Today I went back to the medical floor that I described on my November 3rd post, titled “Jump in the Ocean.” Most of the patients had been admitted on Monday, that being the emergency day for this unit (patients are admitted to the various units in rotation). Today being Friday, a lot of the patients have been discharged. So many of the rooms now have only one patient per bed. Oh what a difference it makes. It looks like a new place, calm and serene!

I remembered some of the patients I had seen on Monday, described in my “The Medical Emergency” post. The middle age patient with an acute heart attack had survived. He was transferred to the Coronary Care Unit the next day, even though he did not have any money. It was so nice to hear that.

There was another patient with viral encephalitis I had seen last week. He was comatose and in catatonic state. I had given him no chance of survival. He appeared better today. He still has ways to go. Another patient with cirrhosis and vomiting of blood looked good enough to be discharged today. There was a patient with hemorrhage in his brain. He looked a lot better. It is amazing how resilient human beings are. With whatever meager resources they had, the resident doctors had made the patients well and got a lot of them discharged. I was told that two patients had died. That was a lot less then what I was expecting.