bravery

A few months ago I saw a 18-year-old with autism.  At first I was a little scared, since he towered above me and was obese. (Over 6 feet tall and BMI was like 35 or something).  I saw that he had progressively gained weight with each of his past visits, so I wanted to draw diabesity labs.  But since he had autism, he was very scared of needles.  Just at the last visit, it took a monumental effort to convince him to just get a vaccine.  After some coaxing by me and my attending, he finally agreed to do it.  We called Child Life to come help calm him down, but he then adamantly declared, "I don't need any help!!!!"

He successfully had his labs drawn for the first time in his life without incident.  He was extremely proud of himself.  His mom was very proud too.  I myself was very proud of him.  He then made statements like, "I feel half of my blood is gone," but was smiling all the time.  Several weeks later, I called the family to tell them the lab results, and his mom told me he had been asking about them everyday, so significant an event it was.  

I saw a very shy 2-year-old in the Peds ED.  She was so shy that she only opened her mouth a little bit when I asked her to, and looked scared during my history and physical.  Since her complaints were fever and abdominal pain, to test for peritonitis I then picked her up and lifted her up and down while saying "Whee whee!!"  (I couldn't lift her up that high though since I have limited upper body strength).  As I did that, she finally smiled!

A month ago I was on the Anesthesia rotation, where I successfully put in peripheral IVs!!!!  Yea yea, I know, it's just PIVs, but since the last time I did them was in med school, I thought it was super cool. 

I then tried intubations.  After multiple failures where all the patients either had small jaws/obesity/crooked airways, I then finally had a patient who had ideal mannequin airway anatomy, and I successfully intubated her!  I then wrote "Booyah!" on my procedure log.