Kerosene

As I come to work on a Monday's night shift. Two other hospital staff follow soon after, taking with them an unconscious man to be admitted to the ICU.

The drama of getting the patient settled in begins. He is barely responsive, thus making a number of tasks easier to carry out, whereas certain things, more inconvenient or challenging. The whole body reeks of kerosene, I cut up the T-shirt while another nurse removes the trousers as we clean the man up. We quickly hook him up on the machines that will be monitoring his vital signs and start collecting blood and urine specimens to be sent off for various tests.

The routines are done and the man remains unconscious, I go back to attend to my assigned patients for the night and start to read through the new guy's case notes as soon as my to-do list for the hour is cleared. Lo, this is another case of drug overdose; his colleagues had found him lying unconscious with an empty bottle of kerosene in the same office.

An hour later, the wife and daughter arrive, stunned and in tears as they look at the state in which their man of the house is. A few nurses speak to the ladies as I watch from a distance.

I never went near the patient again for the rest of the shift.

Has business been bad? Is there something wrong at home? Was he experiencing financial difficulties or health problems? Or was he thirsty for kerosene?

What an irresponsible man.

I find joy and purpose in life by helping the helpless on their hospital(sometimes death) beds, however my patience is limited for people who overdose themselves with stupid things for stupid reasons. May God pardon me for the reluctance in doing more good for such creatures, may my kindness grow.
 

Oh, shit.

This patient came in from the ER to the High Dependency Unit for observation after experiencing chest pains. He asked for a bedpan, which I helped him onto. He seemed constipated, so I gave the man some privacy by turning to other work I could do while he pushed, pushed, and tried his best to let it out.

Cutting the story short, the patient's face turned a bit pale with a very faint tint of purplish-blue! I could not get a response from him, resuscitation was then commenced.

No need for too many details, he received multiple shots of adrenaline and was even intubated. And he did not make it in the end.

From today onwards, I shall be extra careful whenever I see a patient putting in extra effort to defecate.
Who knew constipation could kill?
 

Can I love you? 
Will you let me? 
 
  
  

What makes a man?

What differentiates a man from a boy? How does a guy earn his right to be known as a man? Anybody can age but growth is actually a choice. I have gotten into a certain age group where I find myself at times in an awkward position not knowing if my identity should be a man or just the guy that I had been for the past decade. Of course, the latter is more natural, comfortable and convenient, but it is time to grow up and move on.

"A man takes initiative, responsibility and is not afraid of commitment," Lydia Tang.

"A man knows how to rise above his emotions," Paulus Lee. 

I agree with the above, and I know there is much more to being a man than just the above.

Ini kalilah?
 

One on Three

In the knowledge of how well my counterparts are coping in the general wards and the emergency department, there is nothing to boast about me taking charge of three patients in the high dependency unit today. It was a fine Sunday morning, and like most Sundays the ward was a little short on staffing, so the charge nurse from the shift before assigned me an extra patient to take care of.

At first it was quite manageable, the cases were relatively simple and I had previous experience in nursing one of the three patients. Moreover the ease of mind in having no need to worry about admitting another patient, alleviated a significant amount of stress throughout my morning shift. So I got over feeling overwhelmed by the fact that there were going to be three patients to whom I had to be responsible for, after taking over the night shift report and getting ready for the next eight hours of daytime, I felt okay as soon as the night staff clocked out. Everything went smoothly enough until the primary team doctors came; the doctors on-call from the night before were busy checking on the patients and their respective charts, before updating their assessments of the patients and drafting out the appropriate plans; then came the senior consultant, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, looking less intimidating on a Sunday morning. He goes to the patients one at a time, discussing the cases with the doctors who were in the ward for over the past twenty-four hours.

I had three patients' plans to follow up with. And one of them was due for an urgent abdominal ultrasound. The good news was that, while preparing that patient for the scan I had time to care for my other two patients, because a doctor and a staff nurse must accompany the patient should he or she needed to be transported out of the ward. In other words, the doctors were busy, thus giving me some spare time to do other things for the other two patients. Cutting a long story short, we transferred the patient down for her scan and came back to the ward, and the day started becoming really busy. No thanks to my lack of experience, it all just never seemed to slow down. I was so caught up with tasks to performed at/before certain specific timings.

Thankfully I managed to do a presentable-enough handover to the afternoon shift nurses. Again, this was nothing to boast about; not especially since the nursing officer on duty discretely said to me, "Joel, it is okay to ask for help" at the end of the shift.

Still, it was a good shift and I look forward to working more meaningful ones. The journey has just begun and I do wish to be living the dream.
 

I have a life

"You are nurses, most of you should be prepared to work weekends and night shifts. But, for goodness sake, do something about your social lives," said the deputy director of nursing a few months ago during her welcome speech to my batch of newly recruited nurses.

Of late I find myself doing something about my social life! Compared to how I used to live when on clinical attachments, I had been going out a lot more these days. It is not easy, more often than not, I wished I were in bed by the end of a busy shift. Sometimes when I am on the way out to meet a friend for a drink or meal, the temptation to cancel or postpone the appointment tends to be difficult to resist.

Meeting people can seem tiring, to be honest; however, thus far, I do not remember cancelling any appointments. Yay! And I am happy to realise that I nearly never regret taking the journey or paying for the food because friendships matter more in life than selfish rest.

A man needs to work but a man has to interact with the community too. No man is self-sufficient.