Turnabout

I don't like to blog about my work that much, but I've had two interesting situations in the past couple of days that I feel like writing about.

Physician treating one's friends: I was on backup call this last week, and was called in to do a somewhat exotic procedure on Saturday night (these things always seem to happen on the weekend, late at night). The referring physician gave me the patient's last name only, but as he hadn't actually seen the patient yet, he gave me some misleading demographic information. The last name was an uncommon one, and I know people here by that last name. But because of the information, I thought that the patient was probably an elderly relative of this family.

So, imagine my surprise when I pulled up the patient's medical chart and discovered that it indeed was this particular friend of mine. Several people I know are members of our particular health plan, but I've never had to actually treat any of them, beyond just reading an x-ray or two. It made me a little nervous. I want to give every one of my patients my very best effort, but when it's someone that I know, there's just that much more pressure to be at the top of my game.

I pray at work all of the time for myself, my patients and my team. It is a great help to know that I can rely on promptings for the spirit to get through tricky situations I may find myself in. The worst thing that's happened to me professionally came about by me not listening to those promptings. I also know that Heavenly Father loves all of his children and is very concerned about how things go for my patients and my techs.

I said prayer in my office, then I went upstairs to see her. We both burst into tears shortly after I walked into the room. She said, "I was wondering if you were on call tonight." The funny thing is, I wasn't even supposed to be backup this week. I'd traded one of my colleagues so that I'd be free to go to Utah at the end of the month for my grandma's birthday party.

By the time we got the patient downstairs and prepped, I had put myself in "doctor mode" more than "friend mode", which helped me stay focused and sure of myself. Though the procedure did go well as far as helping to treat her, it wasn't textbook. Perhaps one of my more-experienced partners would have done things a little differently to get the same end result, but I am convinced that things went exactly the way the Lord wanted things to go for my friend at that time.

When I visited her the next day, her symptoms had abated for the time being, which was pretty much all she needed for right then. She said, "You'll never know what an answer it was to my prayers to have you be there." Funny, but my prayers (after I knew that this procedure was going to be requested, but before I knew that the patient was my friend) were more along the lines of: please help this patient stay stable over the weekend so we don't have to come in late at night to do this uncommon procedure."

Heavenly Father needed me to be there for my friend, whether to comfort her or because of the way I ended up getting the result I did, or maybe both. Either way, I'm glad that I could be there. I just don't want to make it a habit to see my friends on the table.