Nonchalant, ignorant and irresponsible

PMS-Ing!!! Was so short tempered yesterday and just flew into a rage(s). There were supposed to be 4 people working in my team yesterday and after my friend and I had done our morning round, we realized that 2 of our colleagues were missing. They still hadn't arrived for work at 8am. We start work at 7am.

So I called HO A. He apologized and told me that he would be late due to car problems.. Fair enough., good enough a reason. But I still gave him a piece of mind for not informing us, his colleagues and I even did that on our department whatsapp group (of course our whatsapp group only consists of ho, no mo or specialist in it). 

Then I called HO B. No one picked up the phone. I whatsapp her in our group chat again but no reply . I guess she isn't in our group chat. And she didn have the courtesy to inform that she wasn't coming to work. Even when she came to work today, she just acted as if nothing happened. I mean come on, where is your sense of responsibility and teamwork. No respect for your colleagues. 

And the weird thing is Ho A actually called B to tell her he ll be late and she just said okay. And then she herself didn come to work. I mean why the hell would you say okay when you are planning not to come to work. Really cannot fathom what is in these people s minds.

Later on in the day, HO A went to read a venous blood gas for a patient and I was wondering an hour later why he didn come to show us the results. I was thinking that the result must be normal. Since he is a first poster, I went and checked the vbg result just to make sure it was okay. I got a shock. The vbg shows severe metabolic acidosis with a ph of 7.22 and a HCO3 of 8! We took the vbg because the patient s blood sugar was very high and we were worried of diabetic ketoacidosis. 

I realized that that result doesn correlate with the patient clinically as the patient was very well and comfortable and no symptoms of DKA. It was either the abg machine was faulty which is something very common in our hospital or that the result doesn belong to the patient.

What angered me the most was that HO A failed to see the significane of the terrible vbg results. If that is really the result of a patient we would have to intubAte the patient immediately. I called him and half shouted at him. For not recognizing the severity of such a vbg result. For not recognizing that it must have been an inaccurate result for that patient. For failing to at least ask us or show us the results and simply just leave the results in the case note without doing anything.

As expected it turns out he doesn't know how to interpret a blood gas result. I cooled down after that and sat him down and taught him slowly how to interpret blood gas results. I even turned the oxford handbook page to the acid base balance chapter and asked him to read. And guess what he said? 

"Eunice I have 2 of these books in my car but I cannot read la.. I just cannot.." 

Me: Why cannot read?

HO A: Arrr..aiya.. My English is not very good.. I cannot read la. 

I really hope he takes an effort to improve and learn. If not, his nonchalance and ignorance and irresponsibility are going to cost many lives.

Another incident that sparked off my anger .. Yes, I m not done yet.. I found out 2 of my patients' specimen, one was a blood specimen and another was a specimen from the patient's abdominal drain, weren't sent to the lab since Thursday. We kept tracing the results and just couldn't get the results. We collected the patient s abdominal drain for 4 consecutive days because of that. And I found out that all the specimens were still in the ward and not sent. I just flipped. I saw a ppk and just complained to her. 

Aiyo.. All these may seem like trivial matters but they angered me a lot. I just don't understand why people can work like tHat. They just can't be bothered. Stressed betul working with such people. 

And perhaps the PMS is also another contributing factor for my short fuse. 

Let me sleep!

I am glad my boyfriend is also a doctor. No offense to anyone or not trying to sound all high and mighty. At the end of work each day, we would talk about our day and most of the time, I'd unload on him about how my work has been.. About the patients, the bosses, some interesting cases, how busy I was. And he would understand. I can't tell this thing to my dad or my brother, my mum understands quite well and sympathizes. My dad once told my mum he couldn't understand why I could be so busy and that stemmed from me not answering his calls. How can I answer his call when I m in the middle of doing rounds with my specialist or when I am working in labour room where there is no line. My brother came home from work and asked quite persistently for me to go dinner with him. How can I comply willingly when all I want is to have some sleep after being awake for 21 hours or that I need to grab some precious sleep before going to work the night shift?! They don't understand and I don't bother explaining.

And so I salute couples of different occupations, for being able to understand and compromise with each other on the different line of work and working time. How do they do it?!

And this post arises due to frustration on being awaken from sleep just to go eat. I would have preferred to have my sleep and then wake up in a better mood which would have given me a better appetite. Once again, family or not, I miss my privacy and freedom! :(

Forcing a smile

Privacy invaded. Personal space breached. No heads up for me whatsoever. Just happened one fine day. Talk about surprises. Unpleasant surprise . My space, my privacy but I have no say. Have to bear it all in the name of family, love and duty.

Keep telling myself I have many things to be thankful for. It's a test I know. Can't do anything except accept it and thank God for this trial. It seems He thinks I am getting too comfortable. 

"forced smile"

Short bursts of happiness

Trying very hard not to feel depressed. The time right before work is always worse as the thought of going to that hellhole is just well, depressing. But when it' s time to go home, I would always feel happy. And I always feel good during my off days. But not anymore recently. During my off days, I find that I am feeling a bit down too. Nope,that can't do! Refused to let stupid O&G defeat me although I know this is going to be a tough battle since the new shift system is out and it involves us working for even longer hours.

And so I am trying to give myself short bursts of happiness here and there to counter that depressed feeling. Forced myself to come to the mall today and just hang out. Kinda missed Nadiah who would always be there for me in Uni. She seemed to be able to sense it whenever I was feeling down. She would ask me out for shopping or a movie or a nice meal or go eat some really sinful cakes/ ice cream/ chocolate.

Although there is no replacement for a good friend, I thank God for a new company, for bringing him into my life.

We went for a little road trip to Desaru, my suggestion, of course. Need to get out of town for a bit..so sick of work and the hospital and the town.

                                                       

The desaru beach was surprisingly quite clean and nice.

                                           

                 

Ostrich farm                                         

It's really not bad. They have guides and every few minutes there'll 

be someone giving a talk and introduction about ostriches. 

                                         

                                           

                               

The ostrich egg is hugeeee! We have been told that an ostrich egg is equivalent to 25 chicken eggs! Guess how do you open an ostrich egg? They used a drill! 

I have a photo of me standing on 2 ostrich eggs but I don't have the photo with me. It's quite amazing how big and hard an ostrich egg is. 

We tried the ostrich satay. If you want to visit the farm, I suggest you go with an empty stomach because there are a variety of ostrich meat products for you to try- fried ostrich eggs, ostrich bak kut teh (lol?!), ostrich satay, ostrich steak, ostrich meat curry etc etc. Too bad we already had lunch before we went there.

And if you're lucky, you'll get to witness some extra scenes like ostrich copulating.. Haha.. We were lucky. 

What a shit place I'm in!

I am not happy. There are temporary short bursts of happiness on and off but the baseline feeling that I feel is :( . It' s not something chronic, just started to have this feeling since 2-3 weeks ago. Sigh... I feel so exhausted mentally. Of course the root of this crappy feeling is O&G. Working in this department in this hospital just sucks beyond words. The work that never ends, that's one thing. And you walk and breathe stealthily afraid that any move of yours might cost the life of both a mother and  her baby. And then you will be punished and what punishment could be worse than having to spend another few months in this posting- Extension. Just thinking  of it gives me sleepless nights (not literally of course, most days I just come home and konked off  'cuz I am burned out by the time I reach home)

I know I shouldn't be such a baby considering all specialists and MOs now are relatively so much nicer than the previous ones, at least that's what I've heard. After work everyday, you have that feeling of unease, worrying that throughout out your shift you might have done something wrong or not written something properly. Documentation is of utmost importance in O&G. Improper documentation could jeopardize their job. I understand, I really do. Every perinatal mortality and morbidity contributes directly to the national statistics. That is why everyone in O&G is so paranoid and obsessive about documentation. And if I remember correctly, perinatal mortality and morbidity is one of the statistics used to determine how developed a country is.

All this stress, worry, trepidation, work are slowly taking its toil on me. A few specialists saw my face a few times during work and they said "Why do you look like you're going to cry?" I didn't know my face is so easily readable. And I thought that I could hide my feelings well. I thought wrong.

Sighhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh....................................

It's not that bad when I'm working because I don't have the time to feel and think. The most difficult moment is when I wake up, knowing I have to go to work. That feeling of dread is not a nice feeling. I want to enjoy this posting, enjoy doing the procedures and enjoy handling the emergencies. But how can anyone enjoy learning in such an environment. Whenever there is an emergency or a mortality you start praying that you have nothing to do with that case. They will read every single word written in the case file and identify any possible mistake. So whether it's a case that you've clerked today or 2 months ago, you better start praying that your patient never gets into any problem ever. I appreciated the mistakes that I have made because one thing commendable about O&G is that they teach and so I always learn from my mistakes. But any mistake in their eyes is also deserving of an extension. Whatever we do is wrong, whatever we don't do is also wrong.

It's a huge big pile of shit we are in. We, meaning, all of us in O&G. Arghhhh.. Damn shit la... Cannot tahan...

Low point

I am at such a fucked up place with fucked up bosses and seeing literally fucked up patients.

I haven't cursed for a long time, not even in crazily busy medical.

This posting is in an entirely different realm..the evilness of the people here just know no bounds.

Pampered and Loved

There have been a few times when I really wanted to blog but the internet at my house is practically non-existent. I'm hoping that I'll have time to finish blogging this post before the internet is down again.

3 more weeks to my medical posting. Can't wait to leave already, unlike in Paeds when I didn't feel like leaving at the end of my posting. Passed my medical assessment, with a shocking 97%. I didn't do that, God did. It just couldn't be me. I didn't even have time and the motivation to properly revise. My assessment was on Valentine's day, Thursday and the day before was Ash Wednesday, a day of obligation, meaning it was a must to go to church for mass. But I skipped church on Wed and I felt so bad and so guilty. But if I had gone, I would just come back from church and crash straightaway without studying.

In retrospect, God is great indeed! I had some time to study on Wednesday at the expense of missing church. My ward wasn't the active ward on Thursday, which meant that I could finish my ward work quite fast, leaving me with some time to study and calm down before my assessment in the afternoon. I was so afraid that God would punish me for not going to church but I was such a faithless creature for even thinking that. God is loving and wonderful and merciful. How could he possibly be so petty as to fail me just because I missed Ash Wed?! I was completely speechless and just touched when I found out I passed with such good marks.

During my assessment, I got a call from a guy asking me very abruptly for my exact location in the hospital. I was annoyed at first. For one, I was in the middle of exams and this guy never introduced himself and just asked "Di mana kamu sekarang?" To cut the story short

A bouquet of roses with a box of chocolate was delivered to the hospital for me, to my ward, signed and received by a male colleague on behalf of me in front of all the patients, my colleagues and MO. I told the sender later that luckily I wasn't in the ward to receive the flowers in person and be the center of attention. Imagine the horror! Haha..  I know I deserved to be smacked for saying this. Many girls would kill to be at the center of attention for this. But what to do?! I am just too shy! Muahaha...   

The gifts, the dinner, the time spent with you, the many hugs and kisses...

I feel very pampered and very much loved.