Tuesday, January 13, 2004
The Root of All Evil is Me
After working the shop floor yesterday, I tried to hand over my last patient to the coming-on SHO; it didn't seem that complicated to my mind : man with renal colic, needs bloods checked and IVU organised pre-decision to discharge.
I was surprised when she took it badly and snatched the paper from my hand groaning irately that this wasn't the kind of thing to hand over. In my usual slightly slow-fashion (She once put it - blur like a squid I think.) I just laughed nervously, trying feverishly to decide if she was kidding or just having a bad hair day.
A short while later, she buttonholes me and growls that he hasn't PUd for the dipstick, you have to MAKE your mind up, shall we go straight to IVU now? - we can't have him sitting around forever! ...forever? He'd only been in an hour. He was also a complete twat, and after I gave him a PR voltarol stat on arrival he went to the loo claiming bowel spasm (huh?) and heroically said, I can't hold it in anymore, doctor! (You don't hold a suppository in dickwad, it STAYS in all by itself!). This same chap came in vomiting a 10 on the richter scale although he was really dry retching, and from the sounds of it, voluntarily. He woke all 10 patients in Majors at 4 in the morning with his 200 decibel vomiting and shouting. No matter, I figured. Just grit your teeth, shove the voltarol up, ignore the indignant nurses (Just voltarol? What about morphine??) and true enough, 5 minutes later his pain was gone, vomiting seizures terminated. (Whaddaya know that urology house job was good for something after all!) And then he refuses to pass urine for the dipstix... Argh. (I haven't got any sensation, doctor!)
I had half a mind to stick a suprapubic catheter into him. Instead, 1 litre of stat gelo later (ha!) he opens up like a fountain despite his best efforts (I finally managed a tiny bit doctor, it may not be enough -- the friggin bottle was practically overflowing. I wonder what he calls a lot of urine?)
So I hunker down, stay 1.5 hours overtime, organise his IVU and leave after everything is done.
And I realise this : the root of all evil is me.
Not "me", but Me-centredness.
Egocentricity, seeing the world through ONLY your own eyes, an utter lack of empathy - is the cause of all society's ills. Xiaxue would do well to understand this, but she never will be able to. J, the doctor who caused me to stay 1.5 hours overtime only saw an added burden to her workload, some inconsiderate person handing her too much work at the start of her own shift.
She didn't see the tired bloke burning to go back to london after 10 nights of 10 hour shifts. And she probably remembers the whole incident with righteous indignation - she won't realise everything was sorted out in the end because I stayed.
And so it should be. The only answer to self absorption is the people around the Selfish gritting their teeth, and soaking it up - with their heads held high.
Society is filled with unsung heroes - of the type xiaxue detests - the gentle souls that she accuses of "faking it" - you silly girl, don't you realise it's much harder to hold your peace, and it takes much more courage to turn the other cheek, than it does to lash out? That fire and wit are fine - but ire and sh*t are not. Because ultimately, someone else will have to clean up your sh*t.
*********
Sitting in the lounge nursing a cup of coffee, I read about ER's new star, Kiera Knightly's sidekick from Bend it Like Beckham (whose name escapes me) learning how to Make it Big on ER as the new medical student.
And it strikes me that, bloody 'ell, I've been there, and done that.
I AM Carter, now.
Except, the Real Thing isn't quite what you see on ER. There are moments, when that multiple trauma wheels in when, yes, suddenly you're there, right in the middle of it, feeling that urgency (sans-music) ER tries to convey, that life-or-death need for speed, when you kneel down, slam the grey venflon home, grab the adrenaline, jump on the chest, whatever -- while the surgeons and the orthopods simultaneously insert bilateral chest drains and the anaesthetist is busy with his central line.
What ER doesn't show you is the mind-numbingly repetitive minor cases, the doctor making the trek out to the waiting room over, and over, and over again every twenty minutes, to call someone new with the same old sprained ankle / minor laceration / cough / cold, greeting him/her with that same smile, same spiel, and writing exatly the same management plan down as he did X patients ago. Ad nauseum.
And it doesn't show enough of the doctors outside hospital, eg sitting motionless in their room listening quietly to Life for Rent and just... breathing.
It doesn't show enough to make you realise that ultimately, at the end of the day, it's just a job. And we're just ordinary people. 99% of the time, we bleed, while we give comfort -- 1% of the time, patients bleed, and we try desperately to heal.
ER shows you only that 1% of the time.
*******
In other news, vaya is advising me to search You out and get in touch.
And as always, the unwritten "script" gets in the way. Empathy forbids, consideration denies. As much as self-bloody-centredness calls me to, I cannot - because You probably wouldn't want me to.
I can almost feel You out there somewhere in this city, no longer a world away. Under the same sky and the same moon.
Turn the other cheek.
******
I always thought that I would love to live by the sea
to travel alone and live more simply
I have no idea what happened to that dream
As there's really nothing left here to stop me
It's just a thought,
only a thought
If my life, is for rent
and I don't want to buy
Well I deserve nothing more than I get
'cause nothing I have is truly mine
After working the shop floor yesterday, I tried to hand over my last patient to the coming-on SHO; it didn't seem that complicated to my mind : man with renal colic, needs bloods checked and IVU organised pre-decision to discharge.
I was surprised when she took it badly and snatched the paper from my hand groaning irately that this wasn't the kind of thing to hand over. In my usual slightly slow-fashion (She once put it - blur like a squid I think.) I just laughed nervously, trying feverishly to decide if she was kidding or just having a bad hair day.
A short while later, she buttonholes me and growls that he hasn't PUd for the dipstick, you have to MAKE your mind up, shall we go straight to IVU now? - we can't have him sitting around forever! ...forever? He'd only been in an hour. He was also a complete twat, and after I gave him a PR voltarol stat on arrival he went to the loo claiming bowel spasm (huh?) and heroically said, I can't hold it in anymore, doctor! (You don't hold a suppository in dickwad, it STAYS in all by itself!). This same chap came in vomiting a 10 on the richter scale although he was really dry retching, and from the sounds of it, voluntarily. He woke all 10 patients in Majors at 4 in the morning with his 200 decibel vomiting and shouting. No matter, I figured. Just grit your teeth, shove the voltarol up, ignore the indignant nurses (Just voltarol? What about morphine??) and true enough, 5 minutes later his pain was gone, vomiting seizures terminated. (Whaddaya know that urology house job was good for something after all!) And then he refuses to pass urine for the dipstix... Argh. (I haven't got any sensation, doctor!)
I had half a mind to stick a suprapubic catheter into him. Instead, 1 litre of stat gelo later (ha!) he opens up like a fountain despite his best efforts (I finally managed a tiny bit doctor, it may not be enough -- the friggin bottle was practically overflowing. I wonder what he calls a lot of urine?)
So I hunker down, stay 1.5 hours overtime, organise his IVU and leave after everything is done.
And I realise this : the root of all evil is me.
Not "me", but Me-centredness.
Egocentricity, seeing the world through ONLY your own eyes, an utter lack of empathy - is the cause of all society's ills. Xiaxue would do well to understand this, but she never will be able to. J, the doctor who caused me to stay 1.5 hours overtime only saw an added burden to her workload, some inconsiderate person handing her too much work at the start of her own shift.
She didn't see the tired bloke burning to go back to london after 10 nights of 10 hour shifts. And she probably remembers the whole incident with righteous indignation - she won't realise everything was sorted out in the end because I stayed.
And so it should be. The only answer to self absorption is the people around the Selfish gritting their teeth, and soaking it up - with their heads held high.
Society is filled with unsung heroes - of the type xiaxue detests - the gentle souls that she accuses of "faking it" - you silly girl, don't you realise it's much harder to hold your peace, and it takes much more courage to turn the other cheek, than it does to lash out? That fire and wit are fine - but ire and sh*t are not. Because ultimately, someone else will have to clean up your sh*t.
*********
Sitting in the lounge nursing a cup of coffee, I read about ER's new star, Kiera Knightly's sidekick from Bend it Like Beckham (whose name escapes me) learning how to Make it Big on ER as the new medical student.
And it strikes me that, bloody 'ell, I've been there, and done that.
I AM Carter, now.
Except, the Real Thing isn't quite what you see on ER. There are moments, when that multiple trauma wheels in when, yes, suddenly you're there, right in the middle of it, feeling that urgency (sans-music) ER tries to convey, that life-or-death need for speed, when you kneel down, slam the grey venflon home, grab the adrenaline, jump on the chest, whatever -- while the surgeons and the orthopods simultaneously insert bilateral chest drains and the anaesthetist is busy with his central line.
What ER doesn't show you is the mind-numbingly repetitive minor cases, the doctor making the trek out to the waiting room over, and over, and over again every twenty minutes, to call someone new with the same old sprained ankle / minor laceration / cough / cold, greeting him/her with that same smile, same spiel, and writing exatly the same management plan down as he did X patients ago. Ad nauseum.
And it doesn't show enough of the doctors outside hospital, eg sitting motionless in their room listening quietly to Life for Rent and just... breathing.
It doesn't show enough to make you realise that ultimately, at the end of the day, it's just a job. And we're just ordinary people. 99% of the time, we bleed, while we give comfort -- 1% of the time, patients bleed, and we try desperately to heal.
ER shows you only that 1% of the time.
*******
In other news, vaya is advising me to search You out and get in touch.
And as always, the unwritten "script" gets in the way. Empathy forbids, consideration denies. As much as self-bloody-centredness calls me to, I cannot - because You probably wouldn't want me to.
I can almost feel You out there somewhere in this city, no longer a world away. Under the same sky and the same moon.
Turn the other cheek.
******
I always thought that I would love to live by the sea
to travel alone and live more simply
I have no idea what happened to that dream
As there's really nothing left here to stop me
It's just a thought,
only a thought
If my life, is for rent
and I don't want to buy
Well I deserve nothing more than I get
'cause nothing I have is truly mine
