Day 35, One of the things that I’m beginning to realise about Mseleni is that there is rarely anything one could possibly call a normal day. Being on call again last night I was contacted by the nurses to be told that an abdominal injury had come in to the OPD at 2am. They assured me that the wound was dressed and the vitals were stable. I took this courtesy call at face value and eventually fell back to sleep. I went in early this morning to ensure things were under control and see the wound.
The nursing documentation of the wound sounded ominous despite the patient looking fairly comfortable, he had had a chunky dose of pethidine though. As I pulled back the dressings I was somewhat taken aback to find his stomach merrily lying on top of his abdomen. This is not something one expects in the best of times, and least of all when you’ve been reassured that the patient is fine. I duly had a gentle prod of it, trying to discern if any of his bowel was out as well and was unable to visualise the actual wound. He had a laparotomy later in the morning and everything was pushed back into its right place.
Later on in the day I finally had my interview. Now that the strikes have been “suspended”, a panel of two of the senior doctors and two nursing bigwigs grilled me for a job I have been doing (perhaps sometimes questionably!) for the last month. Though they have said they will contact me in a couple of days to let me know the result, it would be hard to see them not employing me as I represent about 10% of the workforce. It is wonderfully liberating to do an interview in this no pressure situation, I was very tempted to be facetious especially as my colleagues on the panel kept giving me wry smiles. In the end professionalism won out.
To wrap up this day of variety I was walking past the OPD on the way home when one of the med students was struggling with a lumbar puncture. Perhaps feeling slightly overwhelmed by her first attempt at the procedure she asked me to take over. I duly did knowing full well that I was still quite new to it all, and even gave tips to the med student. Without realising it a month has passed on this job and suddenly I’ve gone from clueless to teaching others.
RUBEN!!
ReplyDeleteYou may want to put a big warning sign up top saying - this blog post contains graphic images which may be upsetting for some readers.
Won't be reading your blog again while eating that's for sure!
can't believe you & PJ have been gone a month already.