Thursday, October 23, 2003
Casualty.
11 days in.
I want out. Morale has been generally poor. You can overdose on too much of a good thing. My mind is gradually turning to mush, and the daily routine of wake up, eat, go to work, go home, sleep, wake up was getting a little too repetitive for me. My mind turned renegade escapist on me, was beginning to harbour bizarre thoughts about colleagues... mostly involving sharp objects, imagined glares from nursing staff just trying to hurry things along. And looking at another doctor's hair and musing how very attractive her hair was (?!!).
Sprightly stride at the stard, midway through, just tired eyes and a slow squelch through the A&E. A nurse commented she needed a doctor to see to her, and someone pointed at me (one can actually develop eyes in the back of one's head if one practices paranoia enough) and, just out of earshot (except to the vaguely homicidal paranoid nutcase) she replied, I want a nice doctor!
Enough was enough. Especially when I caught myself contemplating the aesthetic appeal of dyed-brown hair.
I needed out.
Thank God for Terry Pratchett.
Night Watch, my salvation.
A nice curl up in bed last night (sleep? who needs sleep!) after a few irate posts online at various pseudopolitical forums (there is no true politics back home, just rather insipid play-acting) with Sam Vines and his merry men (oh dear. how dodgy that must sound. Unfortunately the babellicious Angua, werewolf extraordinaire who spends most of her time naked in his other books was conspiciously missing) and today none of it mattered... nevermind that I mistook a hybrid of SVT and LBBB last night for VT at first glance and fast bleeped the med reg and anaesthetist for "no reason" (they were very nice and understanding about it, and vaguely patronising... or that may have been the paranoia speaking) nevermind that the ABG I was doing as they showed up, and vanished instantly 5 seconds later (the ABG came up a minute after they left) showed a pH of 7.10 on a man who frankly looked like he had kicked the bucket with one foot, and wedged the other firmly through death's door.
Rumour has it he was still alive this morning on NIPPV but wound up in ITU anyhow. Ie, RIP.
Anyhow.
None of that matters. I can laugh it off now with relative ease. I can laugh off, with relative ease the psychotic woman I had to refer to the ortho reg, because her neurotic neurological signs did unfortunately add up to a cauda equina syndrome, nevermind that her 10 of 10 pain score and her inability to weight bear without vicious sobbing and squirming and collapsing sideways subsided into a rather less impressive weight-bearing-with-no-difficulty when the orthopedic SHO saw her, 4.5 hours post morphine.
I can even laugh off the atypical chest pain I saw a month after I last saw and discharged him, when serial ECGs and troponin were normal and ECG changes were absent, in a 40something year old man with no risk factors aside from sex. Today, his pain remained atypical. (burning pain in both shoulders, pain in his tummy and burping +++), and but for the Q waves in II, III and AVF, and the marked T wave inversion, AND the negative troponin. And the extremely nice med reg telling me, oh well, you should have done more than 2 ECGs last time around before discharge. (immediate gut reaction : WTF? They were 2 hours apart and had no changes on either!)
Nevermind. Tonight, Sam Vines, Corporal Colon and Carcer shall be my bedfellows.
1 shift to the weekend!
11 days in.
I want out. Morale has been generally poor. You can overdose on too much of a good thing. My mind is gradually turning to mush, and the daily routine of wake up, eat, go to work, go home, sleep, wake up was getting a little too repetitive for me. My mind turned renegade escapist on me, was beginning to harbour bizarre thoughts about colleagues... mostly involving sharp objects, imagined glares from nursing staff just trying to hurry things along. And looking at another doctor's hair and musing how very attractive her hair was (?!!).
Sprightly stride at the stard, midway through, just tired eyes and a slow squelch through the A&E. A nurse commented she needed a doctor to see to her, and someone pointed at me (one can actually develop eyes in the back of one's head if one practices paranoia enough) and, just out of earshot (except to the vaguely homicidal paranoid nutcase) she replied, I want a nice doctor!
Enough was enough. Especially when I caught myself contemplating the aesthetic appeal of dyed-brown hair.
I needed out.
Thank God for Terry Pratchett.
Night Watch, my salvation.
A nice curl up in bed last night (sleep? who needs sleep!) after a few irate posts online at various pseudopolitical forums (there is no true politics back home, just rather insipid play-acting) with Sam Vines and his merry men (oh dear. how dodgy that must sound. Unfortunately the babellicious Angua, werewolf extraordinaire who spends most of her time naked in his other books was conspiciously missing) and today none of it mattered... nevermind that I mistook a hybrid of SVT and LBBB last night for VT at first glance and fast bleeped the med reg and anaesthetist for "no reason" (they were very nice and understanding about it, and vaguely patronising... or that may have been the paranoia speaking) nevermind that the ABG I was doing as they showed up, and vanished instantly 5 seconds later (the ABG came up a minute after they left) showed a pH of 7.10 on a man who frankly looked like he had kicked the bucket with one foot, and wedged the other firmly through death's door.
Rumour has it he was still alive this morning on NIPPV but wound up in ITU anyhow. Ie, RIP.
Anyhow.
None of that matters. I can laugh it off now with relative ease. I can laugh off, with relative ease the psychotic woman I had to refer to the ortho reg, because her neurotic neurological signs did unfortunately add up to a cauda equina syndrome, nevermind that her 10 of 10 pain score and her inability to weight bear without vicious sobbing and squirming and collapsing sideways subsided into a rather less impressive weight-bearing-with-no-difficulty when the orthopedic SHO saw her, 4.5 hours post morphine.
I can even laugh off the atypical chest pain I saw a month after I last saw and discharged him, when serial ECGs and troponin were normal and ECG changes were absent, in a 40something year old man with no risk factors aside from sex. Today, his pain remained atypical. (burning pain in both shoulders, pain in his tummy and burping +++), and but for the Q waves in II, III and AVF, and the marked T wave inversion, AND the negative troponin. And the extremely nice med reg telling me, oh well, you should have done more than 2 ECGs last time around before discharge. (immediate gut reaction : WTF? They were 2 hours apart and had no changes on either!)
Nevermind. Tonight, Sam Vines, Corporal Colon and Carcer shall be my bedfellows.
1 shift to the weekend!
