Last week my team at the Male Chronic Ward had a very denerving experience. A young man came in with jaundice and gross ascites in renal failure and was encephalopathic. 3 of us had to restrain and sedate him to put in an IV branulla for meds and fluids. And we couldn't get any history from him, so we just worked him up and settled all his acute problems.

My poor colleague had a needle-stick injury while doing a peritoneal tap for the patient. I was so disturbed when she suddenly came up to me at the counter and told me about it. In retrospect, I was more disturbed than my collegue. I urged her to take all the needle-stick injury steps and inform the Infectious Disease Team. NOTHING was known about the patient's infectious disease status.

The following day, the patient's Retrovirus screen test came back REPEATEDLY REACTIVE. That means POSITIVE. My friend just broke down and ran somewhere to hide, to go through the brief denial phase.

For the subsequent 2-3 hours, there was dead silence among us. A part of me felt like the world had become dark and gloomy shrouded with despair and uncertainty. The other part was praying so hard to God, thanking Him that just a few minutes ago, my blood-taking session with that patient had been uneventful.

I know that we hear about this all the time, but I felt so unprepared and surprisingly very affected.

We are doing what we are doing to help people isn't it? Was this necessary? And that night it was quite hard to sleep even though I was terribly tired.

But we picked ourselves up and went on working the following day and the following day after that. My colleague can smile and laugh today, but it's such a heavy, heavy cross she's carrying.

It's Hari Raya today and I'm having a fine day resting at home after a brief morning round in the 1st class ward of only 7 patients under my care. Since Thursday I've been relocated to the 1st class ward and haematology reverse isolation rooms to cover a colleague who's flown home to west Malaysia for the festivity.

It's really very relaxing, minimal blood-taking, and patients are ridiculously well actually. 2 were discharged yesterday but "prefers to stay until Monday", citing that their families were not around over the raya weekend. What can I do? If the specialists don't insist them to leave the hospital, I can't.

And I had a fairly good call on Thursday. 3 admissions after 12MN, but I actually enjoyed the whole experience. One came in with acute exacerbation of COAD, another presented with chest pain and palpitations and the 3rd presented with sudden onset of deep jaundice.

Maybe after going through obstetrics and gynae where clerking is at its barest minimum, clerking again in medical posting reminded me of my student time and I realized that it was actually very fun to go through all the possible differentials when asking about a particular symptom. The brain is working eagerly and excitedly in the wee hours of the morning.

And I'm still challenging myself to keep my composure and my PATIENCE, particularly with patients who's defaulted again and again, and coming in periodically with near-death experince, leaving me wondering in the world why their brains were not well-formed in utero.