When tragedy strikes...

I was on call yesterday....it wasn't too bad a call....did 2 appendicectomies and an I & D...assisted in a laparotomy and AKA...finished my last case about 1am...then i overheard the OT staffs mentioning about a bus being involved in an accident near Tg Aru...there were 20 passengers in the bus and the accident occurred at about 1230am....

So i was bracing myself for an onslaught of admissions...but i didn't receive any calls from the people in Queen side...so about 2am, just as i was about to fall asleep, Chan called me and asked me if i heard about the bad accident (Chan was my 2nd call)...and i said i only heard about the bus accident...but i didn't know if there was any other vehicle involved...and he blurted out that 3 housemen died in the accident...at first i was wondering why were the housemen in the bus..then Chan said there were 4 of them in the car...

Chan mentioned the names of the 2 guys and i gasped involuntarily...i didn't personally know them but our paths had crossed at least once...the only survivor in the car was a female houseman who escaped with a right clavicle fracture and right hip fracture-dislocation...and a lifetime of trauma i suppose...according to eyewitnesses (there was another group of housemen in another car following the car), the driver drove very fast...and he was driving his convertible with the roof down...when the other car reached the accident scene, they saw the convertible car overturned and was a heap of scrap metal...and the bus was overturned as well...

I was so shocked after receiving Chan's call that i couldn't fall asleep again...my mind was in overdrive...suddenly i was so aware of my mortality...i was thinking that it could have been me...one of these days when i'm post call and have been working for more than 36 hours straight, i might just doze off while i was driving home and never wake up again...and i kept thinking about how the families of the deceased housemen would receive the news...their parents would be so crushed...and i thought of how i would react if i were the one receiving the news...scared the sleep out of me....but somehow i guess i drifted off into a fitful sleep...

I was awakened by my houseman to inform me that one of my appendicectomy was desaturating... i went to see the patient...her saturation was about 94% on air...which was her baseline in OT...she was in pain...gave her some oxygen and pain killer...her saturation picked up to 100% and her pain reduced...but i can't help worrying that something might be going on in her abdomen...praying hard that i didn't perforate any bowel or the tie didn't slip from the stump...

Then i saw the female houseman who was admitted under orthopaedic...she seemed stable...apparently, while i was sitting in front with the other housemen who came to visit this female houseman, another ortho patient collapsed in the room at the other end...i didn't even realized it...coz no one called for help...suddenly Kevin the GA MO on call walked in and asked if the ortho HO referred any patient...i thought it was the female houseman...then suddenly one of the houseman who was visiting the female houseman told me that there was an ortho patient who collapsed and the ortho HOs were resuscitating the patient...

Then i saw the ortho MO on call walking in and to the back room...so i went to see what was happening...i asked the nurse if the patient was a DNR patient...she said no...so i asked her why aren't they resuscitating the patient...apparently the ortho HOs have been doing CPR for about 30 mins...i couldn't help wondering why they didn't call out when the patient collapsed...are the ortho HOs not allowed to call for help from a surgical MO although she was in the ward? am i not supposed to help resuscitate the patient since she wasn't my patient? the patient wasn't revived...may God bless her soul...

When deaths occur, i tend to ask God why...and my God-complex gets activated...i can't help thinking if the deaths could have been avoided...but i guess only God can determine the life and death of a person...but i can't help feeling that those 3 housemen's death were utterly unnecessary and avoidable...but all is too late now...may God bless their souls...and comfort their families and friends...grief can be such a horrible state to endure...