709: The Reprieve
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A quick warning, there are curse words that are unbeeper in today's episode of the show. If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, thisamericanlife.org. Rana Haddish is a doctor in the intensive care unit at a big hospital, Henry Ford in Detroit. When Corona cases started arriving in March, she made up this job for herself. She started spending hours of each day walking the fourth, fifth, and sixth floors that made up the ICU, just checking in on her co-workers, seeing how they were doing. Which means that maybe more than any single person in the hospital, she knows best what the staff has been going through at every stage of this pandemic, and she tries to help. Even, for instance, when a unicorn tells her that she is short on bleach and wipes. Let's see if I can poke some people. Okay, thank you. I love you. I love you too. Micky Meek on our staff is the person who first reached out to Rana and got to know her. Hey there, Micky. Hey, Ira. So one of the things that's new about coronavirus is how much death the doctors and nurses see. It's relentless, and Rana especially worries about the doctors who are still in training. It's their residents and fellows. All right, Henry Ford is a big teaching hospital. Yeah, so when Rana was a resident, she says that doctors in charge never checked in with the trainees about their feelings after a patient died. She says it's traumatic. You can feel like you failed them. And Rana says that two of the residents she trained with actually died by suicide. She sometimes still wonders if someone checking in might have made a difference. So when she heard about a team of Henry Ford trainees who lost a patient, she made a point of stopping by to see them. They were all in this cramped, windowless work room. It's on the fifth floor. Hi you guys. How are you? How are you? I was trying to write an email to you, but that's why we came down because I figured it was like a better talking thing than we heard there was a bad day. There was a young 22 year old woman who died and everyone took it pretty bad. That wasn't a dry eye. Anyway. That's a resident named Rene saying there wasn't a dry eye. I'm not sure I've ever heard doctors talk like this among themselves about what it's like when a patient dies. That's to say, it's interesting you've played me this tape in before this conversation with the trainees even get started. Their leader, Jay Lakshmi Khan, heads for the door to leave. I'm going to kind of box him. So she stands in front of the door and she opens up this bag of donated scrub caps that have sharks and dinosaurs on them. Did it make you too sad? Is that why you just took yourself out of the conversation?
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