A call filled with nightmares....

So i was on call again yesterday...you know what they say about never changing your calls? the call you changed to will be worse than your original call...not sure how true that holds...but mine greeted me in the morning with a patient desaturating...best thing was, the aunty was an orthopaedic patient... just transferred out from ICU the day before...she was on tracheostomy....and bloody hell, the orthopaedic HOs in charge of the ward was nowhere to be seen...apparently they were at their 'morning prayer'...but really, if any of them had been reviewing the patient that morning they would have noticed that the patient was struggling to breathe through her bloody blocked trachy tube.... when i find out who were the HOs in charge of the ward, they'd better be saying their prayers...

The orthopaedic nurses were frantically trying to call the HOs...and all my surgical HOs were hanging around at the counter...and all of them developed sudden deafness to the desperate cries of the nurses...so i went to see the patient...she was not breathing...saturation was 60%...and her daughter was crying as if she was dead....for a while i thought she was dead too...but i shook her and she started breathing...and guess what? the idiot nurse left the suction catheter in the trachy tube lumen which was already blocked with secretion...if that's not murder 1st degree then this world has no justice...oh wait, there isn't...

And there were no gloves around...all the boxes i reached out for were empty...which only further aggravated my anger...i suctioned the patient's secretion...it was so damn thick i wouldn't be surprised her tube was blocked...i asked for a new 7.5 tube and they didn't bloody have it in the ward...i think it took about 15 mins before they got the stuffs for me to change the tube...good thing aunty was breathing....so after i changed her tube, her saturation picked up to about 89%....some of the surgical HOs were helping me and then the ortho HOs came...i told them, they should never ever let patients die becoz of blocked tubes...that's pure murder...

Then my boss came and saw me resuscitating an ortho patient...they already finished reviewing the female ward...i was like crap!!....so i let the ortho HOs continue with the patient....after i walked off then i realized what i didn't do...i totally forgot to bag the patient...good thing the patient wasn't apnoiec...ish!!! out of ICU less than 3 months and my resuscitation skills are going down the drain... sigh...and i was quite pissed half of the day due to the whole incident...and not a word of thanks from the ortho MO...who probably was never aware of the whole incident...i just pity the patient...coz her tube will get blocked again...and the next time, i might not happen to be around to help....

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful...a few admissions in the male and female ward...did an appendicectomy from 1.45am-2.45am...thought could sleep since they postponed the obstructed hernia...then the Kudat patient arrived...she had multiple left ribs fracture and some haemothorax...and had fluctuating GCS....otherwise vitals were stable...so after reviewing her, i went to sleep while the patient waited for the neurosurgery review...her CT scan showed traumatic SAH...

I had about 3 hours of very interrupted sleep...but i still managed to have a nightmare...i almost woke up screaming...i dreamt that i was kissing a person whom even in my wildest imagination/dreams, i would never have dreamt of kissing..and this happened in a lift..i need to avoid lifts and start using the stairs only..gosh!!! this is bad...i must be getting really desperate...i told Cam about it and she said i need a therapist...i need serious shrink help... arrrgghh!!! worse still, in my nightmare, the guy didn't kiss me back...talk about serious rejection...totally bad for my morale...bbrrrr!!! *shiver*

Oh well, gonna pay back my sleep debt...hopefully no more nightmares...tonight gonna join the paed MOs in their steamboat ritual...yummy...nite...