Grey Thoughts, Blue Memories

Monday, October 30, 2006

OK, first off, I made an appointment for the WRONG BRANCH. Brownie had to see the vet regarding this eye infection he had for the last week or 2 which was strangely refractory to polymyxin B and tetracycline ophthalmic ointment, so off he went to see his least-favourite person in the world tonight.

I must say again, VETS ARE AMAZING. If you know of Brownie's temperament, you might be surprised to know that the vet managed to:

1) Instill flourescein into his eye
2) Do a fundoscopy on him - yes, fundoscopy. Yx, xw and I almost wet ourselves seeing the vet put her face within 3 inches of a growling doggie who won't think twice about biting her nose right off
3) Give him an injection - i.m. of course. Intraocular would be way too much to ask for.

Anyway, he doesn't have any corneal ulcer. I'm inclined to think it's a corneal abscess actually. In any case, he went home with a hydrocort injection, a tube of gentamycin (!!!) ointment and his usual unfit-for-work-stay-at-home-and-laze MC.

The moment he came out of the clinic, he started being his usual naughtiness again - pouncing on the counter trying to get at this 10-cm long kitten, scrambling all over in the car, and gobbling his fried chicken livers right now.

Oh crap. The gentamycin ointment dosing is a 1cm strip to conjunctival sac to right eye, three times daily. Omg .. how to give three times a day? =( Think probably try to do at 6am, 6pm and 12 mdnight.

Wenky
9:34 PM

Disgusting - generalised malaise, avolition and diarrhoea. Ended up waking at odd hours feeling all wrong, so I took an MC and stayed home. Oh dear .. feeling really guilty since it's call day, I'm feeling really bad for the HO that will have to do without his/her Slave. What's more, my ward partner is ALSO off sick, i.e. there aren't any Slaves in my ward today, and there will only be 2 out of 4 during call tonight. =(

Wenky
12:04 PM

Sunday, October 29, 2006

午夜－力不从心。

当你孤单你会想起谁？

想? 想多了，又说给谁听？
说? 说多了，我们也腻了，也厌倦了

精神枯魏，心也寒。

Wenky
10:54 PM

At last, something to look forward to! We're skipping down to watch The Little Shop of Horrors after my Slavery-In-Progress (inspiration courtesy of Dopey!) - how can I miss a musical on gigantic, man-eating, blood-sucking plants? Still some misgivings about the local cast, but we'll see about it!

Now, for the real stuff :

1. The parents of Audrey Jr, who later ended up growing several feet tall, ate human remains and dentists, and shouted for food.

2. A nice surprise when I inspected the garden this week - 2 of the flytraps were flowering!

Wenky
3:22 PM

Thursday, October 26, 2006

2nd last night call today - totally NOT liking night calls at all. The nights usually start out fine, but at 2 or 3 am I start having a downward trend in performance.

See you all later ... can't wait to get home tomorrow!

Wenky
7:05 AM

Saturday, October 21, 2006

Rushed all the way home after work today to pick up my speakers and CDs, and we rushed back to YIH for the 6pm social dance night organised by the club. Turnout was again good, and a few ex-ex-ex-ex swingers dropped by as a nice surprise!

We were supposed to head for cheng san CC after Lindy, for a salsa social night, but the dear old dinosaur in the club managed to entice all of us to head for the esplanade instead, where a swing party was going on. It was quite a cool affair, although by this time I was 110% zonked out already. So in total, 7 of us went for the dance.

Ra and Dinosaur during a super-fast number - they ended with this spectacular dip, where Ra dropped down still shaped like a star ... turned out that she was too beat from the fast song to curl up properly, but hey - it turned out to be uber cool!

Wenky
1:28 PM

Monday, October 16, 2006

After 3 weeks of madness in my old ward, I suddenly find myself in a totally different situation - UTTER BOREDOM. From 20 patients per person, the 2 of us are now sharing a grand total of .... 9 patients. Yes, NINE. i.e., my afternoons are spent looking at my watch and wondering why time passes so slowly.

It would have been alright, just that it's marred by tonight's call. I hate night calls. Oh, have I not mentioned that already? I don't see why they can't arrange for doctors' work to be in shifts, like the nurses. I suppose these people never do think of simple solutions, do they?

Feeling all upset now. Time creeps like a handicapped snail when you are in absolute limbo. At least in other places, we'd have avenues to hide out and rest in all mannerisms and distasteful contortionisms available. But noo .. I'm now just doing sit-napping in one of the ward rooms. What about the call rooms? HA HA HA. (Say that again, this time in a disgruntled tone) The 2 IDIOTIC students on call last night didn't return the keys. How very nice.

Wenky
2:45 PM

Friday, October 13, 2006

The Scotland one is HUGE. Taking forever just dealing with the photos alone, and I haven't even touched the videos yet!

Wenky
11:12 PM

Thursday, October 12, 2006

Hah, managed to get iMovie to work! Finally getting the hang of what the stuff does, and frankly it's quite amazing. Only problem is, my disk drive is RAPIDLY filling up and I have no idea where the files taking up the space are. Frightful. Monty, any idea? I suspect it's the movies that I've been placing from the external disk drive into iMovie to edit - perhaps after I burn the DVD, I shall delete the stuff.

Wenky
11:20 PM

Thanks for the rest, it really did me some good! (Although I woke up with a hungry Brownie, a sore throat, and contact lenses still on ... ouch)

Had a quick chat with a JC senior yesterday, and felt this fleeting but thorough sense of relief that I'm not the only one, an anomaly. She felt the exact same way as I'm feeling now, so it's all good. I'm still very intruiged by how so many of them rise to the occasion so well - don't some of them get ill at least? Still, if you take a hard, close look, the MOs and above seem to have had something snap in them through the years. I see it especially in the ladies. Of course, I'm assuming they are pre-morbidly normal, cheerful, fun-loving people. It's really scary.

Was doing a tiny bit of thinking this morning, perhaps the drread (for me at least) is the uncertainty of this job. You know me - I like things to be comfortable, to know exactly what I'll be facing today. But no - no 2 days are ever the same.

Wenky
7:04 AM

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

OK, so the tiredness isn't just a figment of imagination, it really shows up during physical exertion. Had a really hard time last night during training, and it's even worse since we did this horrid aerial called the Swastika over and over and over again. The girls make this swastika-ish shape with their legs while we carry them around, eeeks. Ended up falling asleep while driving, gross.

Good for weight loss though, current rate is 1 kg per week.

Looking forward to the weekend, but not to the night call coming Mon. Or even better, looking forward to the end of this. All of a sudden, being a NORMAL student doesn't seem that bad a thing at all!

Was rather pissed off by one admission yesterday, from a Home. The patient couldn't speak, and the ONLY history the Home gave was "breathless". That's all, I swear. HELLO. I can *see* that she's breathless, thank you. So essentially they sent a patient over, "we don't know what's wrong and we certainly ain't telling, so just sort her out."

Gonna miss my consultant. Thanks Dr.K, I couldn't get any higher praise than that yesterday. =)

Wenky
7:15 AM

Monday, October 09, 2006

Hah, this should make it easier to blog! Still struggling with how to use iWeb and iDVD though.

So little personal time now!!

Wenky
11:38 PM

Sunday, October 08, 2006

Anyone listening outside my door this morning would have signed Form 1 and sent me straight into IMH.

"Computer, open my browser."
"Computer! open my browser!"
"Hello!! open my browser!!"
"Hello!! Hellooo!!???! open my browser!!!!"

Had a fly time trying to make the com recognise my voice. Not necessary, definitely, but fun! Haha .. finally managed to get it to work.

Spent the morning backing up Yx's entire hard drive, and so far we've touched about ... 0.25% of the external drive's capacity. Cool, now I can take all the photos I want.

Feeling a little ill. Again. Not physically (ok, slightly febrile, but this point's moot), more of a weariness. And it's only the third week! Just to ask my old CG-mates and anyone else reading this ... do you guys feel like this? I mean, I'm really enjoying myself most of the time - I just hate the calls - but I get so down whenever I remember that this is what life is going to be like next year, and possibly for most part of my life. Docs are definitely over-worked.

Don't want to sleep now, but yet I'll be a walking zombie otherwise. Bad, bad, bad. I guess it wouldn't be so bad if there were friends around.

Wenky
11:48 PM

I shall not mar this post with unhappy stuff, so .. here goes.

My first post using a mac and on wireless! Muahahahaha .. ok, I'm easily thrilled. The MacBook came in on Wed afternoon, and on Sat we went to Sim Lim to get ourselves some gadgets. Came back with a wireless router, an external hard drive and a stack of DVDs. (Yes, my old laptop can't play DVDs so I'm thrilled by blank DVDs - got a problem with that?)

Still trying to get used to the new OS, and so far none of the reported problems with this new series has cropped up yet (touch wood!) .. stuff like random shutdowns and mooing noises. Some inconveniences though, but they're being sorted out. I don't quite like the keyboard though. =( It's too widely-spaced, and I keep mistyping.

Wenky
7:33 PM

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Not the real post-call, I had mine on Saturday (yes, Saturday). Possibly the one call I'll never forget. Some stuff I learnt:

1) Patients somehow end up in a chorus vomit/hypotension/chest pain session once all the team doctors go home. I can't fathom how this internal bioclock works. Once the clock strikes a certain time, bam! While you're tending to 1 vomitting patient, another goes into hypotension, and 10 minutes later the patient beside the first vomitting patient vomits and while you're trying hard to find the artery to draw blood from, some nurse calls and recites a list of results (including 4 patients with simultaneous hypokalaemias) that requires your immediate attention.

2) There actually is a Vacutainer holder that you can use for blood cultures. More on this later. The Carrie episode.

3) If you insert a syringe into a Vacutainer and the blood doesn't come out, don't force it. KIV Carrie episode.

4) Beware obese, dark-skinned and oedematous people. Alas. My first 3 plugs had to be done on them. What a morale-booster.

The Carrie Episode

It's not funny. Imagine this - for some strange reason, the call turns out to be a 100% failure type of call. Difficult venous access on all patients (geri and oedema), and when you find that thread-like vein, you end up going through and through. After 3 hours of that, I did a blood culture. The patient's blood was ODDLY thick. It literally oozed out into the syringe - and then the patient went into a coughing fit with my needle still in the vein, and CRIPES. It went right through. Oh hell, I have 5mls, that'll do for 1 bottle. So I plunge the syringe into the culture bottle, and hey - the blood doesn't come out! I didn't realise it had coagulated in the space of 3 minutes, and as I pushed the plunger, the needle separated from the plunger body, raining a shower of blood on my shirt, the curtains, the patient, the procedure trolley, the floor.

Great. JUST GREAT. I really needed that, after a whole night of failures.

MO was alarmed, but I didn't get any of the stuff on my face, let alone my eyes. Still, it was quite a sight, and people were staring. Reminds me of that show, Carrie. All covered in blood.

*****

You know, while I may joke about loving patients with peripheral neuropathy for plug-setting since they don't feel the pain, right on the other end of the spectrum are those who are clinically unresponsive. i.e. GCS score of 3 kind of patients. And if you think that you can f* these up just because they don't scream at you, you're dead wrong.

One of those extremely difficult patients I had to do on call was like this. Totally unresponsive, and caregiver confirms it and says that patient had been like these all these years. Took a look at the veins - OMG. Oedema (AGAIN), not-so-thin (being PC here), and non-existant veins at all. Was so on the verge of calling my HO and telling him I can't do it, but I thought, heck, I'll give it a go. At least she won't scream at me.

Took me 2 whole minutes to find the vein, and I pierced it right through. SHIT. So I tried a second time. And a third. And all the while just going by pure palpation since the veins aren't visible. I'm trying really hard, but it just keeps failing, and failing and failing. I finally call it quits and call my HO, and as I was packing up, I saw tears in the corners of her eyes.

Unresponsive? I think not.

Felt so lousy about causing the poor patient so much pain that I wanted to go curl up in a corner and cry. It's such a torture, being awake but not quite alive. If she ever gets well some day, I hope I have the chance to apologise for that night.

When your conscience weighs heavily on you on top of having an absolutely incompetent night, this makes for one bad call.

Wenky
7:06 PM

Wenkyland

*****************************

To cure sometimes,
To relieve often,
To comfort always.

Notable Notes

Partners In Crime

Raking Up The Past

Split Personalities

Usual Haunts

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