COMPLETED MY LAST EVER INTERNAL MEDICINE CALL!
feeling an immense sense of accomplishment. although i'm blogging this 4 days later than i should (am currently post-post-post-post call), the sense of euphoria is still within me.
so monday, just before my call started. i prayed, and crossed my fingers plus toes, for a good final internal medicine call. i had 3 calls packed within 1.5 weeks this month. no thanks to the call roster planner. but i figured, it might be a blessing in disguise, to cheong all the calls and get them over and done with. thus far, my call luck has been good. in relativity, of course. i've always averaged 15 admissions per call. which is good, cos having lesser actives gives you more sleep since the amount of passives are almost always a constant.
what i didnt realise was monday, 12 august 2013, was the day after a long stretch of public holidays - we had hari raya, then national day, followed by the weekend. which made it a good 4 days of 'holidays'. so oh. my. god. admissions came pouring in. non-stop.
right from when the clock struck 5pm, i got my first call for my first admission. it was a HO1 call. when i arrived at ward 45, to my horror, there were 8 files lined up in queue. all with fresh clerking sheet clipped to them. i texted my mo, telling her i have this sense of impending doom. that was when i decided to check the radar - i dont usually do so cos i dont bother - freaking hell, ward 45 was practically empty, so admissions were pouring into that very ward under my care!
over the course of 14 hours on call, i had a grand total of 27 admissions, of which one was a psycho who eventually went berserk at 230am and had to be sent off to imh. a panhypopituitarism patient who spiked a temperature so i had to culture him - he was FAT so i had to go for the faint pulse i could feel beneath his huge layer of adipose tissue to obtain my 25mls of blood for septic workup, and somewhere into the night went hypotensive from septic shock, so we had to spend 1h resuscitating him. many hypotensions which saw our friendly f* nurses calling me 'doktaur, patient's BP is 70/_'. of course, i had a fair share of temperature spikes, but i was kept too busy throughout the night, i didnt manage to culture them all. most interesting of all, i had a wrist-drop-of-a-male-patient who was too scared to be pricked by the said ward nurses (they're not v gd) for blood taking, and insisted a doctor was to come take his blood at 2am. he cringed and dived into his bed and CRIED when i poked him to take his blood.
sigh. what a call.
but now, i'm so happy cos I AM FINALLY DONE WITH INTERNAL MEDICINE. FOR LIFE. and what makes me proud is that i've survived SGH DIM CALLS, which as people say, 'if you can survive sgh dim calls, you can survive any call anywhere'!
yipee yipee yay yay!
so monday, just before my call started. i prayed, and crossed my fingers plus toes, for a good final internal medicine call. i had 3 calls packed within 1.5 weeks this month. no thanks to the call roster planner. but i figured, it might be a blessing in disguise, to cheong all the calls and get them over and done with. thus far, my call luck has been good. in relativity, of course. i've always averaged 15 admissions per call. which is good, cos having lesser actives gives you more sleep since the amount of passives are almost always a constant.
what i didnt realise was monday, 12 august 2013, was the day after a long stretch of public holidays - we had hari raya, then national day, followed by the weekend. which made it a good 4 days of 'holidays'. so oh. my. god. admissions came pouring in. non-stop.
right from when the clock struck 5pm, i got my first call for my first admission. it was a HO1 call. when i arrived at ward 45, to my horror, there were 8 files lined up in queue. all with fresh clerking sheet clipped to them. i texted my mo, telling her i have this sense of impending doom. that was when i decided to check the radar - i dont usually do so cos i dont bother - freaking hell, ward 45 was practically empty, so admissions were pouring into that very ward under my care!
over the course of 14 hours on call, i had a grand total of 27 admissions, of which one was a psycho who eventually went berserk at 230am and had to be sent off to imh. a panhypopituitarism patient who spiked a temperature so i had to culture him - he was FAT so i had to go for the faint pulse i could feel beneath his huge layer of adipose tissue to obtain my 25mls of blood for septic workup, and somewhere into the night went hypotensive from septic shock, so we had to spend 1h resuscitating him. many hypotensions which saw our friendly f* nurses calling me 'doktaur, patient's BP is 70/_'. of course, i had a fair share of temperature spikes, but i was kept too busy throughout the night, i didnt manage to culture them all. most interesting of all, i had a wrist-drop-of-a-male-patient who was too scared to be pricked by the said ward nurses (they're not v gd) for blood taking, and insisted a doctor was to come take his blood at 2am. he cringed and dived into his bed and CRIED when i poked him to take his blood.
sigh. what a call.
but now, i'm so happy cos I AM FINALLY DONE WITH INTERNAL MEDICINE. FOR LIFE. and what makes me proud is that i've survived SGH DIM CALLS, which as people say, 'if you can survive sgh dim calls, you can survive any call anywhere'!
yipee yipee yay yay!