Wednesday 28 July 2010

what a day....

My crappy day(s) probably started yesterday, when I saw that huge coffin-like metal box on a trolley hidden under the sheet. It was something unusual to see on an orthopaedic ward, but that meant that someone passed away and the person was there to move the body to the mortuary.

Yesterday afternoon, I had to go and do a medication counselling to a young man who was a patient under neurosurgery/vascular medicine team. He is only one year older than me. Normally people goes home in a good mood as they are discharging as their symptoms improve. But this gentleman was going home because we couldn't do anything for him anymore. He suffers from brain tumor which has grown too quickly and large that the medical team had to tell the family that they couldn't operate on him and palliative care was offered. The patient was very positive and he looked okay, so as his dad, but his mum, it was hard to even just look at her. She was not crying anymore, but I could easily tell that she has been crying so long that she was exhausted. I just had to stay strong and comfort them. I hope I did what I could do to ease their way at least medication wise.

This morning at work, on the same orthopaedic ward again, I was told that another person passed away early this morning. The person I wrote at the top and this person were looked after by geriatric team (which we consider as outsiders. they just happen to be on our ward when the geriatric ward is fully occupied), and they probably had a long enough life, but it definitely was not a good start of the day for me anyway.

And then when I was walking around the ward, I heard a nurse calling out one of the patient's name many times. The patient was not responding. The ward alarm went off straight away, arrest trolley was rushed into the room, cardiac arrest team was called in while another doctor who just happened to be there injected a few meds to resuscitate her. Once she came back, I ordered the meds in the resus trolley straight away. If it is an 'urgent order' normally it takes around 30 minutes to get the order done and have them delivered to the ward. And resus trolley doesn't get used so often, usually, so it should have given us plenty of time. But in about 10-15 minutes, the patient crashed again. Nurse was yelling out my name to get more meds. I called the pharmacy that we urgently need the meds, they got the message and chute them up through the tube, which we normally shouldn't do, but that is the fastest way. Still, that takes a few minutes. When a patient is crashing (dying), few minutes can feel extremely long. So what I did was run to the next ward, grab the meds from their arrest trolley and rush back again. I just had to hope that no one on this ward wouldn't crash while I take these meds away from them... It all just happened in a very short time, I felt extremely tired when the event was over. The patient was stabilised, and now she is doing much better. The doctor who was trying to resuscitate her thanked me later (knowing that I'm pregnant I guess..) and that was very nice of him. But I guess my body was a bit surprised with my sudden 'running around' move, I simply had to stay still in a chair for a while to ease my tightened up belly. Yes, I was pregnant. I completely forgot about it for a while...

After that, I went to see a man as he was getting discharged. I later found out that all the men in that ward area had 'gastro bug' (symptoms: diarrhoea, nausea, vomiting, fever, etc) and they got isolated soon after I finished talking to him. Oh WHAT! What about me, I just walked in there.... This gastro bug is causing a big problem in the hospital at the moment, and all the patient are being transferred to one ward for isolation so they don't spread around the bug (or virus). I frantically washed my hands after that...I am just hoping that I wouldn't get any symptoms...

After that, I had bits and pieces that really made my day even crappier, but lets just not talk about it anymore and forget about it, and look forward to a better day.

If anyone has read to the end, thanks for reading.
You made my day!

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