New kinda work

Starting yesterday I had a new job scope (again eh?) hehehe. Now I am the main intern for the breast and endocrine surgical unit. And what a super job this is. Finally I have autonomy about how to manage my day instead of relying on others or having to run around doing other people's errands. Now I get to boss other people (i.e. medical student) for a change. Kihkih.

Azhar (who was the previous intern) told me that if the team was post take (as in they accepted patients the day before), I'd have to come by 7.15. So yesterday I went to the hospital at 7.00. On the way, it started to rain very heavily. Me, the cyclist, was soaking wet through and through. Huhu. The medical student came at 8 and he said the registrar told him the day before that ward round was to start at 8. 8.30...registrar still not here. I texted him and he said he'll be there at 9.00. 9.00...still not there! We started the ward round at 9.40 instead. That means I waited for nearly 3 hours for him. Dahsyat. Thankfully in the 3 hours I had read all the patient files, checked their bloods, ordered new bloods, charted IV fluids for all that needed them and even checked their obs!! By the time ward round was over, I had finished my work for the day. Talk about boring!

Because I was sick, I had a rest at the resident's quarters for a few hours. Then I went to the ward again just to see if anything needed to be done. I checked a CT scan result for a patient which said "extensive pneumoperitoneum". Then only my day started to become a bit more exciting.

The patient had a perforated (burst) bowel so that allows gas to escape from the bowel into the abdominal cavity (aka pneumoperitoneum). It can be life threatening. His stomach was as hard as a board. He was writhing in pain that we had to give him a morphine infusion. Then there was lots to do. We had to call the consultant who was operating offsite to come to the hospital, call the theatre office to tell them we needed to book an emergency operation, call the other surgeons whose operations were on the emergency list and persuade (bodek) them to let us cut the queue.

The patient had an emergency laparotomy (open operation of the abdomen) and they cut out the burst bowel portion. Today we saw him again and he was (quote) "1000 times better than yesterday" (unquote). It's these times that I feel that my job though more clerical than clinical is pretty significant too. I might not be the one who held the scalpel but I helped to arrange for it to happen.

Today was pretty interesting too. We finished ward round by 8 and I finished all my work by 9. How cool was that. Spent the rest of the morning helping in theatre. I observed a total mastectomy and assisted with a wide local excision of a breast mass. Seeing a whole breast dumped into a container of formalin is pretty gruesome. But breast surgery is a nice change after all those appendices.

My cold is worse today. Spent the whole day sniffling and talking like a frog. While assisting in theatre, you can't bloody well wipe your nose so I spent the hour with my nose running freely. Masin ek hingus nih. I nearly lost my voice too.

One of my patient (who has dementia at age of 55 by the way)'s husband was visiting and he "wants to talk to a doctor". So I had to go talk to him with my halted voice.
Me: Has the head nurse told you what's going on?
Man: No. No one's told me anything.
Me: (starts explaining)
Man: Speak up, can't hear you.
I told him I'm losing my voice and he looked at me and shrugged "so?". I felt like punching him in the nose.
Then after painfully telling him an update with my croaky voice and getting breathless (with totally blocked nose, you ain't breathing if you're talking)...that odious excuse for a man said: "Tell me something I don't already know".
What was that all about.. the insufferable jack ass. If he already knew everything, could've save me the trouble, voice and breath. 

I was so pissed off with the man. When the consultant came by later for a ward round; after the ward round the consultant said he thought that man was pushy and unreasonable. I was relieved. If he's like that with everyone then he probably is a jackass and it wasn't because I was a young inexperienced doctor that he treated me as such.

There was also an old demented lady on the ward who kept shouting "help me" every 3 seconds non stop. Seriously every 3 seconds. I know because I measured it after enduring it for half the day. It was so annoying!! Everyone wanted to pull out their hair. I wanted to bang my congested head on the table and shout SHUT UP!

After all the dramas, I went home early today because I was wiped out. Took an hour nap at home while Layth played with my iPhone. Just an hour...that's all he let me have hehehe.

I am so glad I have a whole weekend ahead of me.