The Romance Rx by Kathryn Riya

Author:Kathryn Riya [Riya, Kathryn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-08-23T18:30:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINETEEN

DYLAN

Since Quinn and I have been home from our retreat, we have barely seen each other. We’ve both been on ICU rotations, him in the cardiac care unit, and me in the medical intensive care unit. He has been staying late each night, because he loves it, but also because he wants to show initiative. Even though I have only been seeing him in passing, he has been sending me regular texts every morning when he wakes up and every night before he goes to bed, along with some random musings throughout the day. Everytime my phone buzzes I feel butterflies. After two weeks of texting and quick meetups, we finally have our first official date tonight. We’re both done with ICU rotations today.

I am in rounds right now and my mind keeps wandering to tonight. It’s been a long stretch of working but because today is my last Saturday in the ICU, it’s only a half day. ICU is not my forte. I don’t enjoy wrapping my mind around various vent settings and acid-base metabolism.

“Dylan?” Dr. McCormick says, breaking me out of my reverie.

“Yes…” I reply, hoping I can answer whatever is coming next, and hoping I didn’t miss the question already. We’re in hour five of rounds and I’m fading fast.

Dr. McCormick says, “Can you please tell us the electrolyte abnormalities seen in tumor lysis syndrome?”

I got this. “Hyperkalemia, hyperphosphatemia, hypocalcemia, and uric acid and lactate dehydrogenase can also be elevated.”

“Good, and how do you treat an elevated uric acid?” she asks.

“You can give allopurinol and rasburicase, which converts uric acid to allantoin,” I answer, relieved. I have always enjoyed oncology and probably would’ve chosen that field if I weren’t going into LGBTQ+ medicine.

“Excellent, now Addison,” Dr. McCormick moves on to one of the interns, “can you tell me what kinds of tumors are most likely to result in tumor lysis syndrome?”

Thank god, I am off the hook, for now.

This is also why rounds take so long. Not only do we discuss the management of every single patient, we go through these didactics relating to the patient and the disease, and in many cases, the multiple diseases. It is an effective but exhausting way of learning.

My phone buzzes in the back pocket of my scrubs. I can’t pull it out just yet, and it is burning a hole in my butt cheek.

When Dr. McCormick gets paged and turns her attention to her beeping device, I take the opportunity to peek at my phone.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.