My very dull life in the last half-week
Disclaimer: it is 1.32am, and with less than 5 hours of sleep ahead of me, this is going to be a rather nonsensical listicle, but I hope I find the time to elaborate in the future. So come along with me, and if you stay long enough, maybe you will be able to make sense of it all. I sure hope I do.
Wednesday: Morning shift @ SARI
FYI, SARI stands for Severe Acute Respiratory Infections, and it's a little ironic that I'd only just learned that given that I'd been working in A&E for 9 months, and had no inclination to figure out what SARI abbreviated, until now. Tsk tsk.
It was a rather uneventful shift until we heard the ring of two bells, indicating that a patient was enroute ISORED (which is basically an isolated Red Zone), and my senior colleague had just begun eating. As a joke she said, "Seetha, go and attend the patient first," which I gallantly took her up on because 1) I had nothing more important to do, and 2) I love the thrill of it. I stepped outside and saw that the patient being wheeled in on stretcher was also having their chest compressed, which means the next immediate intervention is to intubate. Two of my specialists were already inside waiting, and one of them said;
"Okay Seetha, come and intubate." I snapped on a pair of gloves before she could even finish her sentence, and stood in front of the patient.
Because cardiopulmonary resuscitation was ongoing, we could skip all the foreplay, and get straight to the action. She bagged him for a little while longer while I stabilized my breathing, and put the Glidescope to my left, and the endotracheal tube to my right. Then just like that, I intubated the patient.
The first indicator of success? Direct visualization of the endotracheal tube entering the trachea, which I could see clear as day.
It was so cool. Less cool that the patient was actually brought in dead, and still remarkably dead 20 minutes after some vigorous resuscitating, but a proud moment for me nonetheless. No, it wasn't my first time, and they died of long-term complications of cyanotic heart disease.
Before I went back home, a colleague of mine from the ENT department was around, and he, like everyone else in the last couple of days, asked about my voice. I skipped ahead and asked;
"My friend who's a ENT registrar suggested I do a flexible laryngoscopy because I've been having a sore throat for over a week now, just to rule out any polyps or granulomas. Do you mind?" and he didn't.
15 minutes later, he played back the video of the slick tube traversing my nose hairs pass my turbinates and pharynx, and suddenly there they were, the most adorable vocal chords I have ever seen: my own! In between them, I saw my own trachea, and I was in awe. Just a half hour ago, I shoved a plastic tube down a dead guy's windpipe, and here I was, looking at my own, which looked exactly the same as his, except I was alive. Are you a little spooked? I am.
Thursday: Night shift @ Yellow Zone
I know this isn't going to make much sense at all, but it's 2.09am, and I really need to sleep, so we're paraphrasing now.
What I thought was a simple case of hypokalemic periodic paralysis, turned into...
- Severe electrolyte imbalance (symptomatic hypokalemia to rule out renal tubular acidosis, hypophosphatemia)
- Cover for occult sepsis
- Type II respiratory failure secondary to severe hypophosphatemia
So yeah, I'm glad my on call specialist was meandering around and noticed that the patient was becoming increasingly breathless to warrant ending up in Red Zone, and subsequently intubated.
Just when I thought the drama was over, a trauma patient was wheeled in, and I could not for the life of me figure out why this oxygen saturation was consistently dropping despite the fact that I ruled out the lethal six.
I'm glad my colleague who has an affinity for chest tubes stuck around to confirm all my findings, and assured me that as long as he saturated adequately under a high flow mask of 15 liters of oxygen per minute, we could have a portable chest radiograph done to rule out a pneumothorax.
However, my on call specialist who thankfully, was still meandering around, decided to up triage him Red Zone immediately, where we learnt that he had a right lung contusion.
So fixated I was on the lethal six, that I completely forgot about the hidden six...
Friday: Post-night shift
Following one of the more significant shifts in my career, I came home and ugly-cried for an hour and a half before passing out on my bedroom floor without even having showered.
When I woke up, I didn't feel any more anger or hurt or the pervasive tug of my ego. I felt, compassion.
Later that night, I learned how to play pool on a snooker table, expanded my "Tamil Sex Songs" playlist (thanks to the notorious but interesting company I keep), and went to bed at 3am, happy to be out and about with friends again, without needing to worry about the ensuing hangover because there was no alcohol involved. Plus, what I wore out inspired the question "Did you marathon through Love Lane?" from bae. Shoutout to my sister for her generosity in donating the Lulu's, and knowing how to crop a top to perfection.
Saturday: (The best) Off day
- A lazy morning with my parents, followed by...
Scenic drives, hawker food that slaps, admiring art that isn't just on streets, discovering the most stunning beach that somehow evaded my knowledge for all the years I've called this island my home, which I ran from end to end in pursuit of the prettiest shell(s) in the scorching late afternoon heat that led to some funky audiovisual hallucinations or altered sensations ... Not entirely sure I was tripping on endorphins or experiencing a heat stroke or both but, it was cathartic as hell.
- A lazy evening with my parents, followed by...
- Laundry, re-decorating my ears, which included a jewelry audit and re-piercing my helix, followed by...
- A late night shenanigan involving a broken float ball valve, the combined idiocy of my father and I leading to my mother barking at us for watering the plants in our garden at 1am followed by...
This, okay, it's now 3.03am, and I sincerely hope I find this a worthwhile cause for sacrificed sleep when I'm (yawns) at work in (bigger yawn) 5 hours.