Friday, October 20, 2006

Spain Here I Come!!

YAY!!!!! I'm on holiday, finally! And I'm off for 2 weeks!! woohooo!!

The best thing is I'm travelling to Spain with mum & dad. I will be there for about 8 days....so no blogging for the time being ok? I pwomise to show some pics when I get back. =)

We are going to spend a half of the trip in Southern Spain and the other half of it in Barcelona.

Ok...I should probably go to bed...need to catch the early flight to Malaga.

See ya guys soon! Hope you all will have a nice weekend.

Adios!

Simply Gullible

Oh...it is not me! It was a female nurse in my ward. (Let's call her A).

There was a patient B in the ward who had a penile prosthesis inserted quite a long time ago. He was admitted for a different urological problem. Anyway, he probably was having some problem with his prosthesis and decided to ask A about it.

"Excuse me nurse, you know I have a penile prosthesis. I was wondering why my erections are not as long as it should be?"

"(A turns red) Errmm, I do not actually know, but I'll ask my colleagues and see if they can answer your question."

She told her fellow nurses about the question and everyone began to laugh at her. She did not go back to B to answer his question. As she was busy doing her other tasks, her colleagues decided to make fun of her. Let's name one of them G.

"Hey, remember you told us about the penile prosthesis problem? Well, the surgeon who performed the prostehsis insertion was just on the phone, and I have explained to him about that patient's problems. Apparently, there is a mistake in that batch of prosthesis. That is probably why his erections are shorter than normal."

"Huh, are you sure?"

"Yes....If you don't believe me, you can speak to the surgeon yourself. He also said that the length of the erection must be measured so that the default can be written down in a form, and this will be sent back to the manufacturer."

"Huh, I don't believe you. There is no way I am going to do that."

"Look, I am serious. You got to measure the length of the erections. As I said, the prothesis that was inserted into that patient has a manufacturing defect. We need to measure it so that we can let the manufacturer know how short it is."

"Right, why it has to be me?"

"Well, it is obvious isn't? You are the nurse looking after him."

"Right, fine. I'll do it."

A ruler was passed to her and she began to put on her gloves......


hahahahahahaha


She caught some of the other nurses giggling. And then it only struck her that it was actually a joke! A is just simply gullible!!

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

07.30 am and still in bed

I woke up this morning thinking that it was only 6.30 am. But I jumped out of my bed the moment I saw that the time was actually 7.30 in the morning. Shit. I am going to be soooo late for work. Work starts at 8am. Shit. Then, I remembered that my friend, who gives me lifts in the morning, (let's call her L) has probably left for work first. I smsed her anyway to say that I was running super duper late.

I went for a shower kerbau style and was out of the house by 8 am. I walked fast, nearly running, to catch the train. Arrived at the city centre 10mins later and I had to walk a moderate distance to the hospital. As I walked, I was cursing myself for sleeping through my alarm (which was, in fact, a double alarm). Shit. Shit. Shit.

By the time I reached the ward (roughly 8.30am), sweat was kinda pouring down my forehead. The ward round was probably over by then. *phew Thank goodness my consultant did not see me walking into the ward late. Otherwise, it would be quite bad, wouldnt it? I cooled down and a few nurses spotted me late.

"Ling, you are sweating. You just rushed in, eh?"

"Hi Ling. There you are. You slept in, didnt you?"

"Ahhh Ling. You're here finally."

Those were a few comments I received from them. I giggled when I heard them. It was so obvious I overslept this morning. =D Being my usual efficient self, I managed to get on top of my workload today, despite being late. =P

My shift ended at 2pm today. Although there were quite a number of admissions today, both my colleague and I managed to clerk them all. I was quite happy that I was able to leave the hospital on time....for once. Just before I left, one of the senior doctors based in the ward saw me packing my bag and said:

"You going home already, Ling? You woke up late this morning, and now you're skiving away..."

hehehe...I started to laugh. It seems to me that the whole ward is aware of my "sleep in" this morning. And I really do quite guilty to be honest. It is so different when I was still a student. When you are late, no one really cares and you don't have any responsibilities to attend to. Imagine if I was the only junior doc in that ward, then, things probably could go worse. No one would be there for the ward round.

I pwomise I would be early tomorrow!! *fingers crossed

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Tragedy in The Toilet

This is written in retrospect.

It was a nice peaceful quiet working Friday. Both my colleagues and I have finished all our outstanding jobs and have clerked in all the patients that arrived at the ward. So, we decided to have our first coffee break for the week. (mind you, it was a busy week). Sat down at the usual coffee shop, and ordered my usual mug of tea with a scone.

15 mins later...

*teeeteeeet *teeteeeet (that's my pager going)

I made a face when it went off because I was lazy to answer it and was kinda surprised to get a page from the ward. I called the ward and was informed about a patient with a low haemoglobin of 6.5. The patient was actually a border in the ward. So I didnt know much about him.

So I quickly gulped down the remaining half mug of tea and rushed up to the ward to review that patient. I first looked into his notes to get some background about the reason for his admission. My effort was futile. There was no new notes written in his casenotes. The only information I managed to gather from the nurses was he was transferred from a different hospital and he is known to have diabetes.

Right. That wasn't very helpful, was it?

Ok. I decided to speak to the patient myself about his current admission. The patient was placed in a sideroom. The door to his room was closed, so I knocked at it first and opened the door. "That's weird," I thought. Patient was not at his bed. I called his name a few times, and actually went into the room to see if he was around. There was still no sight of him.

"Uurrghhh...uurrgghhh"

I turned around I followed the direction of the moan. There I found the patient lying on the floor, with his pants halfway down his legs, and faeces splattered all over him and some on the floor. *fuck

I shook him to see if he was alert. And thank god, he was. I shouted for help and the nurses came to clean him and bring him back to his bed. Remember this man has a haemoglobin of 6.5 and guess what? His faeces were very dark brown-blackish in colour. So there you go. I have found the reason for his problem. He was obviously bleeding from his upper GI tract. He looked very very pale, was tachycardic, tachypnoeic and sats were 88% on air. BP was still ok.

I've managed to get IV access on him in order to get crossmatch 4 units of red cells for transfusion. My colleague helped me to phone the SHO for review and he came almost immediately. I was supposed to take some blood gases from him too, but unfortunately, I failed miserably. The patient was very oedamatous to the extent where I could not really palpate for his radial pulse. There was pitting oedema at his wrist!

Oh well, the SHO managed to get the ABGs, and the patient was resuscitated and they took him for an emergency upper GI endoscopy.

*phew (so much for a quiet and peaceful Friday, eh?)

Sunday, October 08, 2006

Urology Nite Out

A night out with my friends yesterday has allowed me to gain abit of social life. hehe. Eversince I started working, I have been hiding in my house most of the time or going out by myself. So the night out, with my urology colleagues, (hence the name urology nite out), was certainly something I had looked forward to.

The pub we went to was this place called "The Three Judges." It was located just about less than 10 mins walk from my flat. To be honest, the pub looked kinda dodgy from the outside. It seemed like a pub for the older population, not for young people like us. =P But one of my colleagues (lets call him G) kept telling us that it is the best pub in Glasgow. He said the pub has even won a few awards! Therefore, to proof his point, he decided to organise this nite out at that pub.

Upon entering, the pub has a pretty nice atmosphere. Everyone looks pretty sane, busy drinking their alcohol and chatting away. We managed to get a table at the corner. My guy colleagues were very kind to buy us gals the drinks. While drinking, we started talking nonsense. haha. G,who obviously is a regular customer at this pub, started pointing out a few customers in the pub and told us stories about each. It was quite interesting. One was a brazilian hooker, two gals who were sitting at the other end of the pub were lesbians, and etc....

I drank a pint of light beer, followed by a glass of raspberry beer. That was my first raspberry beer in my life, and it tasted great. This beer, according to my friend, originated from Germany. It has a very addictive taste: sourish mixed with the usual beer flavour. I was slightly lightheaded after the first pint, but I am by no means drunk. My friends were all laughing at me, coz as usual, I was as red as a tomato. And guess what? I learnt something new that nite as well. Apparently, some of us Asians, do not have a gene that metabolises alcohol properly. That is why some of us turn very red after taking alcohol. So I guess I am one of them eh?

Oh well, the night ended quite fast, and we were asked to leave coz the pub was closing. We chatted for awhile outside the pub. I was needing the toilet badly. My bladder was on the verge of bursting. So I quickly excuse myself and rushed home. hehe. *phew Lucky my detrusor muscles are still working well. =)

Sunday, October 01, 2006

Ash Cash

Ash cash is new to me.

I have never heard of it before until a few days ago. My colleague called me and informed me that there was a letter addressed to me in his ward. He also mentioned that the letter does not seem to be from the hospital administrator. hmmm....It was abit odd to receive a letter from outsiders addressed to me in the hospital.

The letter was sealed in a white envelope. I opened it quickly, curious to find out what it was all about. My colleagues were sharing my anticipation too. Anyway, I took out a slip of paper, with the heading "Funeral Care," followed by a cheque.

"Ash cash" were the words my colleagues said simultaneously. I was baffled. They explained to me that everytime I fill in a cremation form, I will be paid by the company that carried out the cremation. After hearing that, I have mixed feelings. I felt guilty for being paid just by filling in a form after the death of a patient, but at the same, it was an extra bonus. Oh well.