The Time Capsule

I have a persistent headache (the sound of babies crying nagging inside my head).

Didn't exactly have a bad call, but you know it's bad also when you get to "sleep" but get woken up periodically throughout the night. The end result is fatigue the next day.

Last night I was awoken several times to attend to several leukaemic children who had spiking fevers.

I could only offer them paracetamol and several minutes of my time of a fairly thorough physical, and maybe a septic work-up, if really indicated. All that more for the extremely worried parents than for the children. And also some reassurance.

The recovery ward/oncology ward in the daytime is like a happy playground from hell. Children wearing masks running around with balloons and dangerous-looking toys, screaming and chasing each other along the cold-looking hospital corridor.

They would be running into me and their remote controlled cars getting into my way.

Though it's the most lepak call in paeds, it's been quite stressful for me. Hence, the headache.

One child was screaming so loud that I was awoken from my sleep around 2am in the HO oncall room at the end of the ward. I got up and started looking for the child. I tracked the crying right up to the other end of the corridor in the procedure room.

The nurses were trying to set a new IV line for the child because her old one got bunked. And she was crying hysterically. I'm sure the whole ward got woken up.

Anyways, I'm getting the hang of paeds. I'll be still in general paeds until the end of this week then I'll be in neonatal ward I think. I'll be oncall there this coming Saturday. Need to tag someone there again before my call. Have to go through the arterial line thingy and on how to set up TPN.

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I'm missing surgery less and less now, so that feeling of heaviness is also bothering me less. I'm also missing Mr. V less. 1 month of cold turkey is cruel but thankfully effective.

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I'm online now to do a little research for my "Time Capsule" presentation on Near-death experience. Sounds interesting doesn't it? It's something my paeds head of department likes to do... he would be scribbling some stuff on a piece of paper during meetings or CMEs and then at the end of the gathering, he would assign some random subjects to HOs to read-up on and make a 10mins presentation the following week.

One of my colleagues got "Turtles of Sabah"! It was hilarious when he was assigned that topic because I knew he was not the kind into animals and the environment. He was a smoking, thrash-talking, kick the damn cat/dog kind of person. So I can't wait for him to talk about the beautiful and endangered turtle species of Sabah.

If he had his ways, he would be going, "Kill all the fucking tutles!"

:D Padan muka.

Another colleague is supposed to talk on abdominal pregnancy, another on handphone technology and another on van Gogh. Interesting...

I'm not sure he's doing this to check on us new HOs (because I was told that he's into public speaking) or he's into this general knowledge for doctors thingy.

Either way, I like it. :) Reminds me of Mr. V when he was asking us whether the Starling in Frank-Starling Law of the Heart and the Starling in Starling forces of haemodynamics were the same person.

They were. I did a little research on this guy and all his works, but what struck me most was that he was not well-liked during his time because he was loud and openly opposed to the then practiced empiricality. He fought for evidence-based medicine.

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Good night!