Fuck the oscars

So today one of my friends from school who is also a doctor was talking about this hospital stuff and managed to trigger another memory from my internship days 

Okay here goes

So towards the end of my internship I was posted in emergency medicine and usually emergency as the name says we see a lot of fucked up stuff 

There was an unconscious boy aged probably 14 or 15 who was brought to the emergency room by an older gentleman and a boy of a similar age! When asked what had happened they said he suddenly fell unconscious. 

So this boy was from one of the schools which was near my college and turns out the gentleman who had brought him was his hostel warden. Yes that school was a boarding school but had day scholars as well. 

So since the warden hardly knew anything about what happened, I asked the other boy about it and promised him I wouldn't tell his warden but I need the complete truth. 

So after a little convincing the young man tells me that the patient had a fight with some other senior kid over a girl the previous day and they had gotten into a physical conflict where the senior kid pushed him and this guy hit the back of his head against a wall or on a rock, I don't remember very well what it was, but he had basically sustained a head injury. They had taken him to some other hospital the previous day to do a CT of the kids brain and found nothing wrong.

Now here when I say nothing wrong I mean there was no evidence of any physical trauma that he had sustained for him to be unconscious out of nowhere.

So my work buddies and me knew it was a case of malingering.

For those of you who don't know, malingering is basically faking an illness to get away from some work or duty or to get attention.

Right so now back to what I was saying.

My classmate who was posted with me that night in the emergency is a total softie. So as the nurses were taking this kids vitals you know blood pressure, pulse, respiratory rate, checking the pupil reflex to light etc which were all normal. My friend goes up to him and keeps shaking him and says nice things to him about how he's a nice kid and should behave better, I ask the nurse to insert an IV cannula immediately. And then okay fine, I tried being nice as well trying to wake him up and make him drop his act, and again my luck is cursed so the ER suddenly started getting overwhelmed with a sudden influx of new patients. Now the time we are wasting on this kid could have been better spent by helping the others who came in. So I lost my patience and asked the nurse to go ahead with an IV line and she did as ordered. And then I asked for a 500ml bottle of normal saline which I opened and suddenly splashed on his face. Now anyone else would have flinched. But our man here is a man of focus, commitment and sheer fucking will. I once saw him delay us from treating 3 other patients with an act....with a fucking act. For those of you who get the reference, here is a high five from me. Now I connected the iv line and rushed the fluids into his bloodstream through the IV line at full speed. And as the bottle became empty. His girlfriend actually came to the emergency room. So our man somehow """"sensed"""" his woman in the room nearby by her voice obviously and thought he would finally get his attention and he would miraculously wake up due to her. Fuck that! I wasn't having any of it I just had to introduce a little anarchy.

I took the opportunity to give him an injection called lasix through the same IV line and also tightened his belt over his bladder. Lasix is a diuretic, basically it makes you pee! 

So I didn't allow her to get near him but told her she can watch him from a distance just to make sure he doesn't wake up yet. And then a few minutes later our man starts squirming on the bed. It was literally like watching his brain trying to decide between maintaining his dignity or pissing the bed in front of his woman.

Finally his mind made the right decision as he slowly got up and saw the smug look on my face and then he asked us to disconnect the iv fluids because he needs to use the washroom because he suddenly feels like peeing. 

Fuck these guys in particular I swear.

The end 

Language barrier

So this is basically an anecdote. Not gonna be too detailed like the previous posts.

Here goes 

A few months ago we had a patient in the COVID-19 ward who needed intensive care because roughly 60% of his lungs were damaged due to the viral pneumonia and this patient constantly had to be left in a prone position on his bed and also constantly needed oxygen support. Patient still had an active infection so it could start progressing to become even worse. This patient wasn't in my ward but the ward upstairs which was taken care of this new doctor who had joined as a temporary medical officer. This young guy spent his childhood in some country in South America called "Guyana". Okay I'm gonna be honest with you here. I never knew such a country existed until this new doctor had mentioned it to me. So turns out he's indian but he grew up there and also did his medical education there as well. His parents were tamilians but for some reason he didn't really have much exposure to his native language. So now back to the current scenario. The patient needed icu support hence he needed to shift him upstairs to the icu connected to an oxygen cylinder and a portable vitals monitor. But all protocol states that before we do any procedure or use any medicine that could be expensive, it is our job to inform all this to the patient's family and get their consent. So let me tell you this. Our young doctor told the nursing staff under him to explain the situation and the need for icu care to the family. 

But I'm gonna tell you something, a lot of times patient attenders can be dicks. They were the kinda people who thought the nurses don't know shit and that they weren't capable of explaining a patient's health status to them.

So they go and start yelling and saying "Why are you people telling us??? We only want the doctor to update us" and usually even I dread this because most people like this will easily eat up atleast half an hour of your work time which can be spent doing other ward work. 

But our young doctor gets up and tries his best to speak in the local language. All he wanted to say was "Please listen to me. He requires Intensive care hence I'm shifting him upstairs and the intensivist upstairs is gonna take care of him". So he says in the local language "Paarungo patient mela poporango....adhuku aprom mela irrukaravanga thaan paakamudiyom". 

And the next second I hear the attenders screaming and wailing. I thought "okay maybe the new guy had some issues so I should go check it out" and when I run upstairs and see the woman has collapsed to the ground and is wailing and crying like a banshee. And I asked the new guy what happened and he explained it to me. And I had to explain to them that he doesn't speak the native language properly and not to worry and I calm them down.

For those of you who don't understand tamil.

What our young doctor said in tamil literally translates to "Look he is gonna go up and after that only the ONE above can help him" 

And yes after I did calm them down they said they were extremely releived because it's "JUST the icu right? Wow we are releived"

Never in my career did I think I'd hear a line like that 

And I go "That doesn't mean he's out of danger yet you inbred"

FFS