Dopey will be away in the wilderness and therefore largely uncontactable from 25th Sept to 6th Oct.
Would highly appreciate if someone could like sms or leave me a message on my blog/facebook about my 7th Oct shift! Thanks!
Actualy night shifts in the fever area aren’t too bad, after the excitement of scrambling to clear the queue (which to be feels quite like an exciting obstacle course, hey i’m never afraid of hard work), we do get some free time in the wee hours of the morning, it’s quite cool and quiet to study then too!
It’s great I’m finally getting a break after about 3 weeks straight of work. I think all the bad luck’s accumulating on me, when I do resus shifts these days, I get an average of 2 collapses each time. :S
I knew it! Monday, whether day or night, is usually a ‘high flow’ day… It was a mad scramble to keep on top of the queue, and it’s only know that I’ve had time to er hem… checked my email, read a few pages of really dry statistics stuff and decided to blog a bit…
For once I really scolded my patients ie. the NS guys x3 who were obviously well (therefore no MC given) and this middle aged lady who woke up with a sore throat (she had URTI symptoms the night before). I couldn’t understand why she had to come to ED in the middle of the night for such a complaint and I really asked her why… She seemed a bit dumbstruck and a bit frantic… I think she started to scramble out of the cubicle. Haha… I don’t know manz… I mean I don’t mind if patients came for a non-emergent complaint which made them ill enough to want some sort of relief, but sore throat?
I think I’ve been very lucky, in fact too lucky. Have only started to get swamped by ‘fever area’ shifts these month, while others, such as L, have already been dubbed the ‘fever area’ ‘KING’. Today was my first night shift over here and it was well ok… patients kinda trickling in… got a bit swamped around 12midnight thereabouts and missed out on one I suspect, URTI case… at least I managed to clear the rest…
It was just a whole host of coughing, feverish, breathless patients. Actually it felt rather good seeing them because this batch actually had PERTINENT complaints! Unlike the MC and ‘codeine’ seekers on Sunday.
Ok now finally taking a breather out there… phew…
I suspect there will be a whole load in coming in the wee hours of the morning… sigh…
Today was the all exciting day of ‘the unveiling of mysterious birthday present’… I think my friend was thrilled with the present. He better be or I’ll be asking for a refund…
Anyway, the horrifying part was when someone said it looked like pyjamas! I MEAN HOW CAN AND HOW ON EARTH…
Suffice to say, even if they DID look like PJs (which I definitely don’t think so) they’ll be the most expensive and branded PJs ever!
***
On a separate tone, Pasir Panjang, Holland, Lim Chu Kang and gasp, the latest… Khatib. Is it a sign that Chik fever is becoming endemic? Ie. we can stop flooding CDC with patients, and stop telling people they have to be hospitalised for query Chik fever and if they don’t that would amount to flouting the INFECTIOUS DISEASES ACT, etc etc…
‘WALL.E’ - directed by Andrew Stanton
Rating: **.5
A choice tag line for the movie would be: “What do you expect, it’s a ROBOT!”
Or perhaps, “Two words… Wall. E”.
When I first saw the trailer, I thought it was such a cute movie, something that would perhaps be a good break from work. It was cute, but after 20 minutes of seeing a dusty, rusty robot trundling around in a landscape of rubbish and hearing a few more repeats of that video clip it liked, it became rather tedious.
Life got a bit more interesting when Eve appeared. The dialogue was expanded by two more syllabus — E-va.
I was rather disappointed.
Apart from gathering that the movie warned of the dire fate of mankind subjected to technological advancements, and an almost complete takeover of humanity by machines… The entire movie was fairly boring. In fact, even though I was awake at the beginning and the end; and my friend was conscious in the middle, dinner after the movie was our greatest concern instead of attempting to piece this… well, alleged entertainment.
I believe that the seventh lunar month ended over last weekend, which would explain my persistently ‘runny’ nose and non-stop sneezing… Anyway come Monday and Tuesday… and TODAY… The crowds at work just swelled to gargantuan proportions haha… I pity the senior managing the short floor. Not a simple feat indeed!
Anyway, a number of cases I saw were really weird… symptoms had persisted over two weeks or so yet they only came now. I think people must be really quite ‘pantan’ about visiting hospitals last month.
I am soooo dreading my next posting, but it should be good for me to go brush up a bit at managing problems in my next posting. No more HO scut work and mindless procedures / admin issues. Yay.
I haven’t had such a good control of my temper for ages… I have to admit, I really don’t have a great temper… It’s those flare up then fizzle out type… Perhaps ED is really the thing for me, since all that adrenaline rush burns off any desire to explode/implode. :D
But today, hmmm I guess I was already very pissed off with myself for not doing something I would have ordinarily done… I probably caused a senior to be horribly horrified and quite upset sigh… and probably that’s why I was so affected when we were about to send that patient up to the ward.
She required an earlier review and given that it was about 9am where ward rounds are in full swing, a call to the ward MO is definitely warranted or she might only get seen after those never-ending ward rounds came to a close. Anyway, that MO upstairs definitely wasn’t in a good mood, said she was busy with an impending XYZ (urgent condition but not those super urgent like yr MIs…) and was very unhappy that our resus patient was going to her ward and asked me to ask BMU (bed management unit) to change her to another ward.
Of course I tried to be very apologetic in saying I couldn’t change the bed… after all from past experience people who’ve never worked in ED before will never understand why we do certain stuff, or why we don’t do ABGs for some of our COPDs or gasp even better, why we did not arrange ERCP for someone who’s likely to have ascending cholangitis. (Hello, if I could do that why does yr department still exist…) But suffice to say, this MO was really a nasty piece… wooo… gave me a earful and ended up simply yelling at me. Anyway, I’m glad I held my temper (I think ED pple must try to remain calm no matter what) though I was just wooshing away after I put the phone down.
I think ED is a very mistaken profession. We do get ‘cursed’ or criticised a lot upstairs… I think we’re really quite a misunderstood bunch. But hey, I have the greatest respect for this bunch of people after working close to a half year here!
In most recent years a brand of brightly-coloured, rubber shoes of a certain brand have taken the world by storm. Soon, everyone was wearing them and a number of fakes of the same brand had sprung up in our pasar malams and neighbourhood shops.
But is this footwear really that good? Cuz I bought two pairs for work, (yes i know, only one’s enough but a gal always likes some variety eh) and the first pair, a rather nice one with suelte-looking exterior and a cute band across SQUEAKED whenever and whereever I walked especially on the ED floors… and I definitely heard the radiographers sniggering whenever I so undignified-ly squeaked past! :P And and the squeaking was definitely awaking those slumbering in the obs room who would then shout out for ‘toilet’, ‘water’ or ‘when am i going up to the ward’ as I squeaked past.
So… I had to stop wearing those things… Luckily this company has got a conscience, taking the shoes back for product examination for 2 weeks and tadaaaa now I have a new pair of shoes in a thankfully different design (who squeak less).
I’m still wearing the other greyish pair that still squeaks but less noticeably, however it’s wearing off quite quickly (and it’s only 4 months into my posting) and a tad slippery on wet floors… Haiz…
The moral of the story? Change shoes.
