The following is the fifth in a new weekly blog series, pulled directly from the Twitter-based stories of Sayed A Tabatabai, MD, who shares touching, heartfelt, interesting details of life on the front lines of medicine with a wonderful human touch. His storytelling ability is a unique gift, and his approach for sharing it equally unique… and it works really well. Keep scrolling to see what we mean.
Previous posts in this series:
“There are many here among us,
who feel that life is but a joke.But you and I, we’ve been through that. And this is not our fate.
So let us not talk falsely now.
The hour is getting late…”
– Bob Dylan, “All Along The Watchtower.”
(A night in Boston. A thread.) 1/
— Sayed A Tabatabai (@TheRealDoctorT) August 29, 2019
I am the Night Float Intern.
From 7PM to 7AM every night, I put out fires, and keep watch.
I get to work as everyone is leaving, and I go home when everyone comes back.
I am the salmon, swimming upstream, avoiding hungry grizzlies as best I can. 2/
— Sayed A Tabatabai (@TheRealDoctorT) August 29, 2019
This is a night like any other. I get to work and get the signout from the teams I will cross-cover overnight.
I am obsessive about detail. As they give me their signout, I mark tasks with highlighters and scribble notes.
I label the “sickies.” Those most likely to crash. 3/
— Sayed A Tabatabai (@TheRealDoctorT) August 29, 2019
The signout lists create an illusion of control. The misguided notion that I will have some kind of handle on the night, and things will be predictable.
They never are.
Every night is unique in its misery.
A “quiet” night is almost unheard of. We hate saying the “q” word. 4/
— Sayed A Tabatabai (@TheRealDoctorT) August 29, 2019
I was never superstitious until I got into medicine. Now I don’t say the “q” word. I curse the full moon. One night I even find myself trying not to step on the cracks between tiles.
Anything to lift my dark cloud.
As the night begins, I head out to the floors. 5/
— Sayed A Tabatabai (@TheRealDoctorT) August 29, 2019
My first set of night float rounds is just taking care of tasks. Following up on unfinished tests. Calling the harried radiology resident to ask if they can read some scans.
Their question is always the same. “Will this change management?”
My answer is always, “uhhhm.” 6/
— Sayed A Tabatabai (@TheRealDoctorT) August 29, 2019
After I finish this first batch of tasks I return to the resident’s lounge. My fellow night floaters are there. There’s two of us interns and two residents.
It’s hard to describe the bond that’s forged between fellow housestaff during residency.
We happy few… 7/
— Sayed A Tabatabai (@TheRealDoctorT) August 29, 2019
“We happy few” is from the St. Crispin’s Day speech in Shakespeare’s Henry V. Right before the famous phrase, “band of brothers.”
It’s a speech given on the eve of the Battle of Agincourt by Henry V to his soldiers, who are vastly outnumbered by the French.
It’s internship. 8/
— Sayed A Tabatabai (@TheRealDoctorT) August 29, 2019
Jeff is playing the PlayStation we have in the corner. Margie is knitting while she watches something on YouTube. Max is reading a book on EKGs.
I’m lying on the couch with my feet kicked up, dozing.
Jeff offers me a controller for a quick game.
Who am I to say no? 9/
— Sayed A Tabatabai (@TheRealDoctorT) August 29, 2019
Almost as soon as we begin a game of Madden Football, my pager starts going crazy. Then Jeff’s goes off too, in quick succession, one page after another.
We look at each other.
What the … ?
Margie quirks a brow, still knitting, “So… that’s usually not good.” 10/
— Sayed A Tabatabai (@TheRealDoctorT) August 29, 2019
I start calling back, and one after another the issue is the same. Chest pain. Multiple patients having chest pain.. at the same time.
Jeff has the same pages. Chest pain, anxiety.
What on Earth is happening? We jog out to the floors together to see what’s going on. 11/
— Sayed A Tabatabai (@TheRealDoctorT) August 29, 2019
As I head to my first patient, my mind is racing. Simultaneous chest pain? Is something wrong with the oxygen supply in the hospital? Is this some sort of practical joke? Is it a medication contamination?
The answer is actually much simpler, and much more remarkable. 12/
— Sayed A Tabatabai (@TheRealDoctorT) August 29, 2019
To understand why so many of my patients, and Jeff’s, were having chest pain at the same moment on the same night, we have to go back in time…
To the year 1919.
In 1919, the greatest player in baseball, Babe Ruth, was sold by the Boston Red Sox to the New York Yankees. 13/
— Sayed A Tabatabai (@TheRealDoctorT) August 29, 2019
After the Red Sox sold Babe Ruth (aka the “Great Bambino”), they hadn’t won a single championship. This drought became known as The Curse of the Bambino.
As luck would have it, on this particular night in 2004, the curse is about to be broken.
On my shift, in Boston. 14/
— Sayed A Tabatabai (@TheRealDoctorT) August 29, 2019
Entire generations of Red Sox fans had lived and died without knowing a championship, but tonight, after 86 years, the Red Sox are going to win it all.
And weakened hearts throughout the hospital can’t handle the stress of being SO close to victory.
I do what I have to do. 15/
— Sayed A Tabatabai (@TheRealDoctorT) August 29, 2019
I ask the staff to turn off and disconnect every TV tuned in to the Red Sox World Series game in the Cardiac Care Unit. So does Jeff.
Together, for one night, we instantly become the most hated men in Boston.
But the chest pains do subside.
And we have a story to tell. 16/
— Sayed A Tabatabai (@TheRealDoctorT) August 29, 2019
It figures, that a bunch of people as superstitious as us would be undone by The Curse of the Bambino…
Later that night, close to 3AM, I can’t sleep.
Jeff is fast asleep, as is Margie. Max is off doing an admission.
I leave the lounge and start wandering the floors. 17/
— Sayed A Tabatabai (@TheRealDoctorT) August 29, 2019
This will become a tradition of mine in the future, dovetailing with my insomnia.
I get into the habit of checking in with all the nurses at all the nursing stations on all the floors I’m covering, while the hospital slumbers.
My nightly patrols.
All along the watchtower. 18/
— Sayed A Tabatabai (@TheRealDoctorT) August 29, 2019
Tonight I notice something unusual on one of the floors.
A man, fully clothed but still wearing a patient ID wristband, stands outside the rooms in a hallway. He’s rummaging through a trash can and pulls out a half-eaten sandwich and starts to eat it.
I’m… perplexed. 19/
— Sayed A Tabatabai (@TheRealDoctorT) August 29, 2019
Before this night is over, he will have severed his own finger, and I will be trying to find it.
But that’s for another time.
Thanks for reading this far.
And to every person on call, in every lonely watchtower:
I see your light, shining in the dark, and I am thankful for it.
— Sayed A Tabatabai (@TheRealDoctorT) August 29, 2019
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