The Pensieve

It started off rather badly, a work filled Saturday morning with loads of admissions over the night, courtesy of our mass discharging the day before, all thanks to ‘the-one-with-perfect-skin’.

Thought could go off ard 12 latest but then was there till like 2pm!

Anyway, it was just good to totally have the rest of the day work-free!

Watched ‘Blades of Glory’, it was just the silliest, most drama-mama kind of movie ever! Lolz… cuz unfortunately couldn’t get any tix for pirates… Luckily the film was just corny-funny all the way from the beginning to the end or we would have just slept on from the advertisements to the credits. Haha…

Oh and then I went shopping!!! Haha… It’s like women shop for 2 hours, try 5 dresses and only buy ONE. Guys shop while the woman is trying out her dresses, choose TWO designs, select one and then just buy! Haha… no fuss no muss. Lolz… But it takes all the shopping out of shopping!!!

Oooh and I bought one dress! Friend said it made me look like my AG though haha… We should meet up and I’ll show you the dress!

Ate at the Bosses Restaurant! HAHA… Eh BOSS! We gotta go there! It’s damn cool! (not like something you would open *snigger snigger* you only know claypot chicken! hahaha…) Very posh and like classy Canton dining like that! :) The Sichuan dandan mian is the best I’ve tried so far! And also rather spicy, not like those fake-spicy ones elsewhere…

Anyway, I’ve to try to add more ‘life’ into my work life!

Today I met the most arrogant health care personnel ever…
PS: He’s neither a doc or a nurse.

This person just slammed the case sheets on the counter, and demanded to know if I were the HO in charge of a certain bed no. and then proceeded to demand why the nurse hadn’t faxed a certain form to him FIRST THING IN THE MORNING.

Helloooo…. what is this kind of rabid behaviour?

Anyway I purposely faked ignorance of his name and position and asked him: Who ARE YOU anyway?

After a brief, cat’s lick kind of introduction, he proceeded to berate at the fact that he will have to see the patient on a saturday afternoon… (It was around 12 then, think he wanted to go home already) Then he actually demanded to know who was the SN in charge and wanted to scold her! WA LAO, you lay your hands off my nurses k! ah bish.

Sorry ah, very violent here, but this guy just made every single other medical personnel in the ward’s blood just boil…

But I won’t let such shit like this get me or the nurses down!

I just looked through what I’ve written this past week, and realised, that I’ve hardly written anything of consequence. It’s just work work work work work work…

YAWNZ. I’m so bored by my own boring writings and boring life. (Though I dun feel that my life is boring, so I guess I must have a boring personality too!)

Got my first pay check today. Well, life doesn’t feel like work to me… It just feels like a duty, sometimes pleasant, at times not. Work’s quite gruelling but I do enjoy it. Must be some sadomasochist. Or something. It felt damn good to give my mother some money… Finally, am giving her something that I earned by myself. :D And now my latest goal in life is to make sure she spends at least half of what I give her on something for her own enjoyment!

I’m sick of hot dog and tuna buns. :( I need warm, real food for lunch! Grrr…

Was post-a post call without time off prev call-call today, having lunch… very sleepy and very hungry. The result is sleeping over lunch and marinating your fringe in the gravy and almost cracking a cup (cuz I was holding it when I dozed over!)

Reg: How was your call? You look quite erm… battered?

YAWN. It’s now been 36 hours straight of hard work, and I haven’t gone to sleep yet though I’m home now…

Life is goood… :)

Blue letter
p.s. Dear Medical colleagues,

Thank you for seeing this 24/C/M
Past history of Mobitz I second degree heart block
Now p/w recurrent episodes of fatigue, fatigue and fatigue.
Will appreciate your kind input and further F/U — KIV start barbiturate coma x 3/52
Thank you!

Dear Surgical colleagues,

Thank you for your referral.

24 yo / Ch / Male
PMH: Mobitz I 2′ degreen heartblock. No IHD/DM/CVA
Now c/o:
1. Recurrent fatigue
No CP/palpitations / decreased effort tolerance/swelling of LL/ orthopnoea / PND.
No rashes/ bone pain / fever / LOA / LOW. No dysuria/abdo pain/diarrhoea.

PE: unremarkable except for crabby mood.

Imp:
- work exhaustion tro cardiac event
- diff dx: depression with ?suicidal ideation, kiv refer psy.

Plan:
- bloods: FBC, RP#1, CRP, Ca panel, Mg, phosphate, ACS + ECG x3
- kiv septic work up if TW, CRP elevated
- kiv refer psy cm.

Please update us when results are back. We are NOT for medical takeover.

Thank you.

Dopey (15/5/07)

Getting obsessed with work. Do you know I go thru my changes right before I go to sleep every night? lolz…

Anyway, my superboss is making me go on tenterhooks.

Like one MO once said… “During my posting, if you measure my serial ACS, you’ll find my TropTs going up… It’s like having a STEMI on ECG too!”

Today, apparently superboss turned up super early to have afternoon round… One of the other HOs saw superboss from the distance and went to hide in the MO room. So imagine my utmost horror when I looked up from CPSS (I was pre-clerking a new admission) and saw superboss’s face! Stuttered through my updates (especially since I couldn’t find my change paper…) haiz… But superboss looked pretty happy and went off to hunt for the other two. (I don’t think superboss found them though… and then just left… waaaaa why me??? )

Anyway, I aim to do my best so that SB (superboss) won’t explode at me anymore…

Funny incident today:

During afternoon rounds with my lovely reg

“So for bed xx, I DIL-ed the family, and then the pt is not for ICU/intubation/CPR… blah blah blah…”

pregnant pause…

Reg and MOs: You DIL-ed the family??? It’s the pt lah!

Bugger. But you get the drift rite…

1. Using my elbow to compress ABG sites at the femoral artery… or tying a glove around the wrist to compress the radial site.

2. The art of tai-chi… aka shooting multiple referrals for one pt to numerous departments, often times hinting that they take over.

3. The art of protecting one’s own ass… (documentation is the magic word!)

4. How to finish lunch in that walk between the canteen and back to the ward. (On the other hand, some people are probably trying to 成仙, cuz they dun eat at all!)

5. Charts to con, IMR to reg, file to myself and start scribbling.

6. Remember to charge the COWS…

7. Learning that work never ends and you really have to prioritise!

1. TOC (trial off catheters) I would highly appreciate it if teams could do their TOCs in the morning so that the poor on-call HO (who is cham enough as it is) won’t have to bother about something like inserting a urinary cath!

2. Nurses who don’t give the patient’s ward/bed no. when they message us! What am I to do with a message like: ‘Newly admitted patient from clinic to bed 7, pls clerk the case.’ And then, don’t answer the call when I call back to check on patient location!

3. New cases coming in anytime after 6am.

4. The 6am bloods. Bloody hell, I’m exhausted, rushing to complete any other changes and do not relish spending 20min patiently palpating for a person’s veins!

5. Plugs for renal patients! (especially those with AVF already)

6. Anyone calling from the **A class wards asking for an update, or asking to see the doctor for some obscure complaint.

7. All prep rooms! They all look different in different wards! It’s quite hard to locate the equipment I want… (Which explains why I carry a pouch bulging with those blue butterfly needles… they’re perfect for anything, including ABGs!)

8. The 4-5am period. That’s the darkest period of the call…

9. Weekend calls!

10. Entire kampungs who accompany their relative to hospital, persist in crowding around the bed while I’m clerking and keep getting in the way of equipment and staff.

Here’s a preview…

How to drive, the Dopey way!

Credits to Bruno Bozzetto.

Some stuff Dopey’s infamous for!

Her parallel parking!
She has never successfully parked her car in parallel when only one slot is available, and is not ashamed to declare it here… Lolz… In fact, her very kind boss, who has her welfare at heart (and of course, doesn’t want her to keep reporting late for work at the ex-claypot stall) wrote up a how to park parallel guidelines for her —> Parallel parking by Boss

Driving into the ditch at hospital X
Remember how there’s this car park that we are allowed to use in hospital X? The one on the hill? There’s a ditch near to one of the parking areas rite? And yours truly made an overly acute turn and drove into it. Sigh… required two porters to help port the car out!

The infamous turn @ Tampines!
Once I was driving along a four-lane wide road at Tampines, where I realised (or rather, my 24hour dial-a-map service) instructed me to make a U-turn… Thus, I did a rather illegal U turn on that wide road, only to realise that all FOUR lanes ran in the same direction… Deftly, I made another illegal U turn again! Luckily no other cars were around, or I would have turned into oncoming traffic!

Losing the car
The most embarrassing incident was at NUS science carpark, in front of so many meddies, hunting for the car…
And then there was the really horrid one at the Far East car park… Another time at Vivocity… even at the multistorey at my own place… lolz…

Losing the carpark -> not again!
And if losing the car weren’t bad enough, she loses the car park too!

The reflex turn
As you all know, I chart my path around Sg based on locations of various hospitals… So once, on my way home from Clarke Quay (actually, just very recently…), I made a reflex turn into SGH A&E instead of the AYE… Sighz…