Attachment

Today, one of my very first patients finally left the hospital after a two week stay in the NICU. She was an adorable little girl with the sweetest mom and dad who would come stay with her in the hospital every afternoon. She underwent an extremely invasive and rough surgery but came out like a rock star. After 10 days of recovering, I'm so happy that I got to see her go home and be with her loving family.

Though it's hard to measure, it must be tough being in the hospital for such young babies. The environment is noisy and every day there are a handful of random people staring at you, feeding you, changing your diaper, and moving you around. Usually, a stay in the NICU will run at minimum about two weeks, most likely a lot longer. Most stays will also involve some invasive procedure as well. I can't imagine the stay in the NICU being like a vacation!

Since babies usually stay on the service for a good amount of time, we get extremely attached to them. When they're doing well, we're happy and when they're having a rough time, it makes us worry like no other. Sometimes, we wonder how we can fix them and wonder why we can't figure out what's causing them to be so sick. Medical school always taught me how to treat the diagnosis but what happens when you literally cannot find the diagnosis, even with some of the brightest doctors working on the case together? Medical school never taught me that part.