surgery

Surgery was never one of my strengths. Imagine the dread I felt on the first day of rotation in a government hospital near a slum area known for high crime rates (read: lots of stab wounds, mauling, gunshot wounds).

The first day fell on a holiday, so the hospital was working on a skeletal staff and only the staff on 24-hour duty were required to report. The number of patients I saw in the ER and the ward was overwhelming. I had barely warmed a chair with my backside during morning endorsements when I was called to assist in an emergency appendectomy.

Of course, there’s that peculiar practice in some hospitals of having junior interns like me pushing fluids and IV medications aside from doing IV catheter insertions, blood extractions and dressing of wounds in the ward. You barely finish with one surgical wing, when you hear yourself being paged to hurry on to the next wing. And when you think you’ve just about had it working in the ward, you get called down to the ER to help de-bulk the increasing number of patients coming in. So you proceed to take the history and P.E. of incoming patients, insert IV catheters to bleeding patients with collapsed veins barely there, insert nasogastric tubes and urinary catheters to drunks who proceed to pulling said tubes/catheters as soon as you turn your back. In the wee hours of the morning you end up suturing the wounds of said drunk patients on whom anesthesia do not work so they squirm and holler in pain with every stitch you make.

It is not enough to be on 24-hour duty, you have to endure the burden of ward work again the the next day – so that all in all you are awake for at least 36 hours, with not even a wink of sleep, literally. After my first duty I had the audacity to invite a friend over to my place for dinner. Poor friend had to endure my inability to make conversation as I head-bobbed my way through the meal. I would eat one spoonful and halfway through chewing the mouthful I’d doze off. At the end of the meal I had to be awakened and told to go to bed. Poor friend had to do the cleaning up after the meal. As soon as my head hit the pillow I was off to dreamland.

I can’t wait until this week is over.