What a Chinese New Year and Valentine's Day...

So this Chinese New Year and Valentine's Day was quite a good reflection of the inadequacy of my social life...and i ended up spending it in the hospital anyway, despite the fact that i was back in KL... there i was, hoping to have a good rest from anything remotely medical when i'm back in KL, but i guess you can't run away from your calling huh?

(Maybe i'm getting delusional, but someone up there might not want me to post this...i finished the damn post only to find out i couldn't publish it coz the net was down...so now i have to restart from here...bugger!!)


We were having reunion dinner at my cousin's house...and i was just about to start enjoying my dinner when my aunty called me to check on my grandma...it appeared that she was choking...so i went and saw her turning blue...i was like shit!!! this isn't happening...short of cricothyroidotomy, we tried every non-invasive technique i could remember to try to dislodge the obstructed food particles but she only seemed to turn bluer by the second...thankfully, she started gasping...but she was having stridor which meant she was still pretty obstructed...so we had no choice but to bring her to the nearest medical centre which is a private one...

At the private medical centre, the locum doctor managed to suck out some huge slices of mushroom and she seemed to be breathing better...but her saturation was still fluctuating...the doctor was convinced that my granny had another stroke which caused her to choke...but knowing my granny, she was just stuffing food in her mouth and trying to swallow mushrooms in whole (she already has some dysphagia problem to begin with after her last stroke)...the doctor was planning for intubation in case her saturation dropped further but they couldn't put in an IV line for granny...initially i refrained myself from interfering but i wasn't about to let granny get hypoxic brain damage just coz some private medical centre nurses and locum doctor couldn't get IV access for granny...so i managed to put in an IV line on her leg before they managed to waste more IV brannulas and charge us for them...

But i wasn't really convinced that granny had another stroke and that she required intubation...her GCS was still about 11/15...and after they put in a Ryle's tube and suctioned her gastric contents, she vomited out another huge slice of mushroom and ta-da....no more obstruction...phew!!! my cousin Sam must have been praying fervently...thank God for His mercy...the doctor then said he was referring us to either another private hospital or a semi-government one for CT brain...so we opted for the semi-govenment hospital since the particular stint at this private medical centre has set us back RM600...

And the ambulance service cost us another RM150...so we reached the hospital about 1030pm...apparently if one of your relative is a medical staff, you get better and faster service...but between you and i, that's bollocks!!! to settle registration, blood investigations, CXR, ECG and CT brain, they took about 5 hours before granny was admitted...there were at least 5 doctors in the resuscitation hall (not sure if they had to run between that and the acute room next door) and about 5-6 patients...i supposed i should just shut up and never to complain about Queen anymore...coz considering that we have less doctors and a whole lot more patients in our casualty at each shift, we are doing a damn good job already...

While we were enduring the gruelling wait, i was watching "Casanova" on tv...Heath Ledger made a fine Casanova...how's that for an original Valentine's day activity huh? hahahaha....so finally granny was sent up to the geriartric ward at 13th floor at about 330am...they were treating her as aspiration pneumonia...so after settling down, i stayed to accompany granny till the others return during the day...it was like doing my 6th consecutive EOD...except that it was a little worse...coz i didn't have a bed to sleep in...and my 'patient' woke up every hour...really felt like asking for dormicum or alprazolam...but i made it to sunrise...and waited till noon before my parents came to relieve me...i was quite hungry and grouchy by then...

Spending the night at the hospital was the last thing on my mind when i came home for my CNY break... but i guess God always have other plans for us...anyway, granny has enough grandchildren to rotate as caregiver for her...you don't need to be a medical staff to be a caregiver...you just need to have plenty of love and compassion...which i think is much lacking among the ward staffs...and i need whatever little break i have to survive another stretch of EODs for God-knows how long...

Anyhow, Happy Chinese New Year and Valentine's Day...oh well, it's just another Sunday...(dang!! i'm sounding more and more jaded)