Oh well...

Kala died last week... was too rushed and too bummed about it to blog. The moment she became "bad" her mother ran to the male ward and I had Mahesh watching me and moaning in the background while I administered CPR. Not fun.

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December 25th Casualty wasn't too bad. The next couple of days were though. However, my best buddy is in SL and I met up with her on Saturday, which was really really good. Let's see how the January 1st Casualty goes... fingers crossed!

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Happy New Year, all! And remember, if you drink, drive and crash your car, you will end up in my ward and I will not be amused. So beware! Don't get behind the wheel unless you're sober! :)

Cheers!

A

Dammit!

My last pair of work shoes broke this morning... I am now faced with the choice of going to work in
a) broken shoes
b) rubber slippers
c) hooker heels

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I'm sorry my last post came out all whiny and self pitying. I'm not the first or the only one to go through this... everyone does it. My Colleague M went home to Mathara today after 5 weeks (and was entirely cheerful about handing over her ward to me).

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So I'm now handling the female ward. Slightly lesser number of patients but full of old achchi's suffering from APR (athe-paye rudha/ anga-patha ridenawa) . Since I've been suffering from APR. meself, I'm a bit more sympathetic than I would have been otherwise. The ward also has Kala*.

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Kala is a 19 year old with a 43% kerosene oil burn - accidental, she claims but the pattern of the burn injury makes us question that. She has a 2 year old daughter and was pregnant with her second child when she was admitted. Her husband Janaka is in my old ward with a "rescue burn"... he has essentially burnt the skin off both hands trying to save her.

Janaka looks a real rasthiyaadu type... dirty teeth, silver earling, breath smelling of stale ciagarettes. He drives a three-wheeler and lives near the place Kala was boarded at a couple of years ago while working at a garment factory. Romance blossommed between the brash sinhala youth and the shy tamil girl. His family was ok with the match... hers opposed it. So they eloped and in true Sri Lankan style, all differences were settled when little Tharushi was born. Kala's family came from Trinco and were living in a house paid for by Janaka.

Janaka had tears in his eyes when he told me how Kala made him tea and stroked his hair untill he fell asleep that fateful night. He was woken up by her screams of agony and had rushed to the kitchen to find her blazing like a torch. He carried Kala with his burnt hands into the threewheeler and then to the Accident Service.

Two days ago Kala developed labour pains and was rushed to DMH where she prematurely gave birth to their second child. She's back in NHSL while the kid is in the PBU.

In Sri Lanka, anything more than a 30% burn injury carried a pretty poor prognosis... i.e. 99% die. Kala has an inhalational injury as well... her lungs have been burn from inside by the kerosene fumes. We're pumping in fluids and plasma and high protien food... but the truth is that she can die any minute.

She scares the daylights out of me.

She's conscious and rational.... her breathing pattern sucks and she knows it. She asks me if she's going to die. Janaka asks me if she's going to die. Her mother asks me if she's going to die. I don't have much to say.

Everytime I leave the ward, I leave in grim anticipation of the call "Doctor, Kala has become bad".

Would appreciate any positive energy you guys can spare to be sent her way.

Last day off...

Literally...

Until sometime after the 7th of January...

I will be working everyday and be on-call every night till then... every weekend and every public holiday too..

Life sucks.

My feet hurt and I have got fairly large, possibly infected callosities on both feet. It hurts to walk. Sometimes I get pains in my feet that make me feel as if they are on fire. They only last a few seconds but sometimes it's difficult to stop from going "ouch" out loud. Maybe I'm getting some kind of neuropathy... maybe it's just that they need a rest.

Three of the guys who were admitted to the last casualty came with the complaint "pain in the big toe". It was hard not to be exasperated... they were eating up time that could have been spent on patients who were much more ill. The Consultant didn't play around... all were sent home with instructions to attend the clinic and get a routine date for surgery, if needed.

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I need new shoes. I started off this job with 6 pairs (2 different designs each in black, white and brown) and now am down to one (ONE!) because the others have all worn out / broken.

I need new clothes because everyday on call = 14 outfits a week. I don't have that many clothes and I can't see myself doing the laundry (or, to be honest, bugging Darling to do the laundry) more than once a week.

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Not much time to surf/blog... you may have noticed fewer and fewer posts... by the time I get home, I'm usually too tired to get Darlings laptop out and trawl the net. All I want to do is to sleep.

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The "season" is upon us and am not really feeling very festive. I'll be doing a casualty on December 25th and on January 1st... :( Did I mention that it's been a year since Darling and I tied the knot? Our first anniversary pic has me in a dressing gown and Darling in his vest, cutting a one pound chocolate cake sent by Brother... the messy kitchen of our apartment is in the background, making me feel guilty whenever I see it.

It wasn't bad... we went to the hotel for dinner and the following weekend (my last off-weekend incidentally) we went out of Colombo (not very far) and just chilled. (details in a post to come...)

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Anyway, I'm just feeling really depressed at the moment.

Sigh...

Luck

There was once this guy, a victim of a blast, not too long ago.

As the fatal explosion occurred, shrapnel entered his body, like it did to others around him. Others died.

The biggest piece that entered his body was a bullet casing that went in through his chest, missed the heart and lungs, missed the great vessels carrying his life-blood, missed the gullet and the windpipe and lodged at the back of his throat.

And all the doctors had to do was to make a small slit and remove it from there.

Two ball bearings also hit his face, neatly entering on either side of his right eye and getting stuck in the skull, leaving his eye - and his vision - intact.

Luck? Good karma?

I don't know... do you?

Have I ever...

Tagged by Sachintha... (though I'm not sure whether it was a I have never or a have I ever tag....) This may turn out to be long and boring but anywez...

Have I ever...

Felt utterly sick and thrown up after drinking 2 sips of peach vodka...

Climbed the Dambadeniya rock using ropes, in the pouring rain and wondered why the heck I was doing so...

Had undiluted passion fruit cordial poured down my bra...

Had my strapless bra come loose somehow and had the cups sticking out under the waist band of my dress like a couple of weird tumours...

Fallen into a swimming pool and nearly drowned (aged 2) and still can't swim...

Learnt Bharatha Natyam (aged 3-5) and then forgotten everything about it (aged 6 to date)...

Run away from home... (aged 11)

Faked a fainting fit in order to attract attention...

Developed meningitis, spent 11 days in a painful red delirium and emerged partially deaf (aged 15)...

Got kissed by a random drunk guy at a party and then slapped him, only to have my hand slither off his sweaty face... (cringe)

Given this totally gorgeous Chilean guy a long and intimate backrub in his hotel room... (Portugal, aged 18)

Got so mad when an A'level exam invigilator criticized the way I was sitting, that I went to her room after the exam and cursed her and her children, that they may never become achievers in life and never know happiness... (it was the Zoology paper, and I got an A)

Had a bunch of dudes in a three wheeler snatch my cap off... then run after the three wheeler, catch up, kick at the rear lights, tear out branches of the pathetic x'mas tree tied to its roof and when they stopped out of sheer desperation, swear at them in a fairly fruity combination of sinhala and english... (Unawatuna, aged 18) (ok, I have anger issues...)

Been so desperately crushing that I'd walk up and down my room, chanting his name over and over like a manthra, willing myself not to call him on a day to day basis because it would look pathetic...

Kissed the same guy while in a moving three wheeler and opened my eyes to wonder how come the Beira Lake looked so dazzlingly blue...

Married the same guy and spent a significant part of the (ahem) first night is a sheer white slip, with my bridal headdress perched on top of my head, jumping up and down saying "I'm married... you married me... we're married...." etc.

Okie... this is turning out to be far too personal.... that's all for now folks! I won't be tagging anyone because everyone and his aunt seem to be tagged already...

Cheers!

Physician, heal thyself...

I managed to leave the ward by about 5.30pm during last week's post casualty. Post casualty on-calls always suck... the ward is full, half of the patients are after surgery and invariably the number of patients exceeds the number of beds.

Anyway, it was a quick break - rush to the flat, welcome wash and then grab a bite to eat, a banana and a piece of cheese, as it happened. 15 minutes later I felt a horrible burning sensation around and inside my mouth... rushing to the mirror, I saw horrible ugly red wheals form on my lips and tongue... eeeek!

Okie... food allergy (but to bananas and cheese??) Horrible pictures started swimming through my head. Things like angioedema and Stevens-Johnsen syndrome start off like this. There was no one at home, so, mildly panicked, I rushed off to the OPD with the vague uncomfortable knowledge at the back of my head that whatever this was, it could kill me.

The OPD doctor took one look at me and said "admit!!". So there I was, jittery as hell, clutching the admission sheet while my name was being jotted down into the admission book of a medical ward. The doctor there - an intern like myself, let's call him R - took my history, my blood pressure, listened to my lungs and said with interest that the taste buds on my tongue were so swollen that he could count every single one of them.

And then we ran into a problem. One of the drugs I needed, promethazine (also known as phenargen) would knock me out completely - and I was on-call that night! A brief argument ensued. I had every intention of going "LAMA" (leaving against medical advice) after getting the shots I needed. There were a hundred things to do in my ward... there were at least 2 patients who were "bad". Dr. R said in that case, there was no way he would give me the promethazine because then he would have to restrain me in his ward - I would be in no condition to do an on-call.

After a few minutes of roundabout conversation "but I have to go"... "then I can't give you phenargen"... "but I need the phenargen" we reached a compromise. I would get the non sedating drugs and wait in the ward. He would go and have a quiet cup of tea. We would decide on what to do once he came back.

My symptoms improved somewhat, my BP continued to be stable and the horrible itching didn't spread beyond my face. So about an hour later I signed myself out of that ward. I cajoled the nurses into letting me keep the cannula - after all, if I collapsed, there would be a handy pathway for nurses in my ward to give me the phenargen or whatever.

So there I was, doing a ward round, cannula on my hand as large as life and patients giving me odd looks and asking "Doc what happened to you?" Happily my Registrar took a firm stand and said he'd be on-call instead of me so that I could go home and get a good night's rest.

Which brings me to the hypocrisy of it all.

Had it been someone else asking my advice, I would have snapped that they needed in-patient treatment and that the universe will survive for one night without them. But no, doctors are the worst type of patients. They are stubborn, idiotic and know-it-all. As a general rule they take poor care of themselves - irregular meals, inadequate water intake, erratic sleep patterns and not enough quality time with loved ones/family. In short, they (i.e. we) are hypocrites of the worst sort.

Sigh... looks like I fit pretty neatly into the stereotype!

Rain...

I'm not sure I like the rain anymore.

Yesterday, I forgot to take my umbrella, had to take a trishaw to the flat and then got frickckin' wet anyway, because my neighbour had a lorry parked down the lane and the trishaw couldn't negotiate the last 100 yards home.

I was wearing a red saree.

I discovered that the afore mentioned saree is not colour-fast.

I ended up trailing pinkish streams of water all the way along the living room, past the pantry and into the bedroom.

In an absolutely foul mood, soaked through, I tear off the offending saree and dump it in the laundry basket... failing to notice that two of Darlings light coloured office shirts are in it.

Saree has been banished from wardrobe.

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On the positive side, the flat is no longer like an oven when I get home from work.

And heavy rains means we get less admissions. Of course it does mean that those who do come are the dead-or-dying. Sigh. Oh yeah, it also means that those who don't have a dry place to sleep in also get admitted. So no real difference in number of admissions... :S

The hospital corridors flood too... and I always get paranoid about worm infections and take vermox "just in case". It's not very nice squelching along, with damp hem of saree sticking to ankles. The lift guy advised me to keep my umbrella up even when walking the corridors "because Nona, the roofs were built only to keep the sun out, not the rain".

Yup, I think that settles it. I don't like the rainy season.