Monday, February 09, 2004
It feels strange to be back.
Walking past the cookhouse with its interminable tides of Abba played at brain-melting volume. Or that gristly, gut-turning smell of chlorine intermingled with patient's food-in-progress. Hauntingly familiar, but from another age.
It feels strange to be back.
Dressed in scrubs, no longer in shirt, tie and white-coat. So unfamiliar.
******
Last night in the middle of clerking an elderly gentleman with fast AF running at a rate of 180 (and yet, still strangely not only cardiovascularly stable but completely asymptomatic) I heard the words "prepare to shock" voiced calmly from the next cubicle. I froze (making my patient's confident refrain stagger uncertainly to a halt) then flung myself through the dividing curtain, multiple venflons in hand to assist the staff grade, who's patient had suddenly gone into VF while he was talking to her. (He has that effect on women sometimes). DC shock brought her back into sinus. Quite possibly the first time I've seen someone live after shocking.
ER makes it look like everyone comes back from the brink. I've seen at least a hundred attempts to date. 1 in a hundred... paints a different picture.
*******
Looking at the pictures on the wall of the doctor's mess of happy chappies at the mess parties, it's with a shock that I recognise a large number of people in one of the photographs - including myself.
It feels strange to be back.
Walking past the cookhouse with its interminable tides of Abba played at brain-melting volume. Or that gristly, gut-turning smell of chlorine intermingled with patient's food-in-progress. Hauntingly familiar, but from another age.
It feels strange to be back.
Dressed in scrubs, no longer in shirt, tie and white-coat. So unfamiliar.
******
Last night in the middle of clerking an elderly gentleman with fast AF running at a rate of 180 (and yet, still strangely not only cardiovascularly stable but completely asymptomatic) I heard the words "prepare to shock" voiced calmly from the next cubicle. I froze (making my patient's confident refrain stagger uncertainly to a halt) then flung myself through the dividing curtain, multiple venflons in hand to assist the staff grade, who's patient had suddenly gone into VF while he was talking to her. (He has that effect on women sometimes). DC shock brought her back into sinus. Quite possibly the first time I've seen someone live after shocking.
ER makes it look like everyone comes back from the brink. I've seen at least a hundred attempts to date. 1 in a hundred... paints a different picture.
*******
Looking at the pictures on the wall of the doctor's mess of happy chappies at the mess parties, it's with a shock that I recognise a large number of people in one of the photographs - including myself.
It feels strange to be back.
