I’ve Not Watched High School Musical in Months

I’ve mentioned many times that HSM is my go to watch when I feel down, and I used to watch it most days after work throughout my F2 year, especially after draining oncall shifts and long days on Gastro, and even more so during my Psych rotation. It got to a point that I’d get home from work and not say much to Boss, but I’d put High School Musical on and that’s how he knew I’d had a bad day.

Anyway I guess what I’m trying to say is that things might be feeling a lot for me to deal with recently, but not bad enough that I’ve had to watch my comfort film to feel better. So that’s definitely a reason to be cheerful! 🙂

(P.S. Starbucks Gal and Bangladeshi Bae came up to visit over the weekend, and it was so great hanging out with them again- so much love ❤)

My Last Shift As A Gastro FY2 Doctor

What a whirlwind the last couple of weeks have been! I am officially in my last week as a FY2 doctor – tomorrow is my last post-take on call shift and then I will be DONE; we thank God!

Last Tuesday was my last shift on the ward, and I’ve spent the last couple of days visiting my dear aunty Funzie for a much needed retreat – it was so much fun and I’ve come back feeling refreshed and ready to change over jobs next week… but more on my post FY2 plans later.

In the month it’s been since I last updated this blog, I started and completed my on call night shifts, and my goodness, the hectic day shifts on the ward were definitely a breeze compared to how overwhelming the nights were. 1 doctor (me), covering 10 medical wards… it was A LOT.

I’m not going to go into detail about how they went because it took me a while to recover from how awful some of the shifts were, so here’s a haiku to sum up my nights:

Never ending bleeps,

Yay for helpful registrars,

Site team are the WORST.

Yupp. And in the words of Forrest Gump, “That’s all I have to say about that.”

Moving swiftly on, how was my last day on the Gastro ward? I started the day hoping for a calm, relaxed shift; I was only meant to be working till 3pm because of allocated self development time, so surely the ward would be fine till then, right?

Yeah… WRONG.

My last day on the Gastro ward involved a patient self discharging, then being brought back to the ward by the Police because they had tried to take their life. This same patient also snuck alcohol on the ward, which they downed with some Paracetamol and Anadin, ofcourse. They then required holding powers (a.k.a sectioning) by me because they became aggressive and tried to leave the ward; all this whilst continuously threatening to take their life. Yupp. And this was just one patient.

Also on the ward that day was a patient who had an upper GI bleed that required an urgent endoscopy, as well as other acutely unwell patients with ascites and liver cirrhosis. Basically, it was all kicking off and with the Registrar dealing with urgent referrals around the hospital, I had to manage most of this by myself, whilst also being shadowed by the new FY1 doctor, so I even had an audience watching me trying to juggle everything!

I guess I can laugh now at the irony of me having to section a patient whilst on a GASTRO rotation – I really thought I was done with Psych after the draining four months of it I had but NOPE, I had to bring back a lot of my knowledge of holding powers to be able to correctly section the patient. I was the only one on the ward who knew how to do it, so I guess that was God trying to tell me that though my experience of Psych was quite distressing at times, I really learnt a lot from it, because I was able to apply a lot of my patient management skills from there to the suicidal patient on the ward.

My last day wasn’t all doom and gloom though – I got to do my first ascitic tap! It’s funny because I’ve done quite a few ascitic drains now but never a tap, so glad I was able to do it before leaving Gastro.

Despite how busy it’s been, I’ve really enjoyed my time on Gastroenterology. I find it so so interesting and I’ve learnt so much over the last four months. I would really consider it as a speciality if I didn’t have to go through being a Medical Registrar as part of training for it. Yeah Med Reg life, especially in a district general hospital, is most definitely not for me… *shudders*

Here’s to more regular updates now that my foundation training is coming to an end and I have a new job… but more on that in my next post 😉

Junior Doctor Anecdotes: The Mezzo-Soprano Who Needed a Cannula

HELLO! It’s been a little while since I last updated this blog – it’s been a busy couple of weeks getting used to working in hospital again, but loving life on Gastro so far! It’s definitely been better than Psych because it’s great to be part of a team again, so it’s been nice to have more support and seniors to call when I feel out of my depth with patients. I’ve also spent the last couple of weeks finalising my plans for life after F2, which has all been very EXCITING, but more to come on that soon…

Anyway, since I started on Gastro, I’ve completed my AMU oncall block, which involved long 12 hour shifts. As the ‘post take’ doctor, it was my job to see new admissions with the Consultant, and then do the jobs for them. It also involved keeping track of the patients being clerked by the ‘clerking doctor,’ as I’d get bleeped to see them with the Consultant when they were done.

As you can imagine, I was kept very busy during these shifts because the patients who needed post taking were from all over the hospital, so definitely a lot of walking, meaning that I got to know my way around the hospital pretty quickly! It really taught me how different staffing levels can be in smaller hospitals, because my F1 jobs were in a big teaching hospital that had a massive Acute Medicine department, so AMU shifts there always had a lot more doctors around to do the jobs and clerking.

A patient that stood out during my AMU long days was an elderly woman, who I was called to cannulate. Various nurses had attempted but were unsuccessful with getting the cannula in, and she really needed one for a CT scan, so I said I would give it a go. Anyone who has followed this blog for a while will know that I reallllllyyyy struggled with cannulas last year, and after 8 months of GP and Psych, rotations where I didn’t have to do any cannulas, I was seriously out of practise. So why did I volunteer to try, you ask? Well I decided to back myself and give it a try if she was willing – practise makes perfect, right?

Yeah… so my first try was no good… as was the second #peak

The lovely lady told me to give it another go, even though I was ready to give up at this point. As I was setting up the equipment, I was chatting away to try and put her more at ease, as one of the reasons that my cannula attempts had been unsuccessful was that she kept flinching/tensing when I inserted the needle, so I thought that if I got her to relax a bit, it might just work.

As we were talking, she joked that we might be more successful if I sang to the veins “to get them out of hiding,” which immediately reminded me of that time I sang with a nervous patient to get a blood sample from her. So I was suddenly struck with some inspiration.

I asked her what her favourite song was, and she replied that she was “old school” and more into musicals, so OFCOURSE I had to ask her what her favourite musical was, and it was Les Miserables, one of my favourites as well! I suggested that it might help if she sang her favourite song from it in her head to distract herself from the needle, but she became visibly emotional at this.

She told me that she had been a mezzo-soprano and had sang in choirs for most of her life, but then she got diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease, and her voice was the first thing to go. She added that she still loves singing, but it makes her sad because she doesn’t sound as good as she used to be, so doesn’t like singing to herself as much. Then she asked if I would sing with her.

So that was how the both of us ended up singing I Dreamed A Dream from Les Miserables together in the middle of the ward, and this ex mezzo soprano showed me that she still had quite a voice on her.

And guess what? I got the cannula in on the third attempt.