SIP cold turkey

wahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh my old bones are c-r-e-a-k-i-n-g. *squeak*

SIP is officially over! 1st September sure came really fast. hai. oh yar Happy Teacher's Day to LiQi and Huiling! and my papa.. aha =P *gives imaginary card and gift* =P

didnt have time to blog the last three days... really feels as if time has wings and is hurrying me along, i have exertional dyspnea le! currently having body-brain dissociation. ha. my brain is awake but my body is still asleep... *snores*

our HOs took us out to dinner on thursday! whee! it was a really fun outing, i think the good thing about SIP is you really get to know your seniors, quite like Medicamp! The day didn't start out too good (i walked into my bedroom's door and bumped my fingers and toes, so tired was I from the previous day) but luckily it ended well! We went to Riverside Indonesian Restaurant, and i actually felt quite brave that day! Drove in the end under duress! aha. though none of us who sat in my car actually knew the road we got there just fine. blame it on our impeccable sense of direction. *smirks*

it was a really good feeling to hang out on a weekday night and do nothing more stressful than talk rubbish! the food was good, company was excellent! i felt sooooooooooooooooo hungry i thought i can eat up the entire bbq platter! (thanks to the lacklustre free lunch we had that day... bah so disappointing! thursday free lunches used to be really gd =() i dunno why i have been labelled perpetually hungry by liqi... i protest! it's qingyuan who's always hungry at 12pm! ha. anyway we discovered a new bottomless pit among us! taadaa let's give a warm welcome to our bottomless yet slim miss esther leow! ha she practically polished off the entire plate of leftovers! while the guys just sat there and insist they couldn't eat another bite... tsk. i was helping to eat too! what's wrong with the world today... no wonder i am getting fat!

we wandered into a place called asylum after dinner for some drinks... and boy do i totally understand why it's called asylum!

u go in sane; u come out nutty.

the service was really really horrigible! (horrid + incorrigible) gosh! i think i can list it top of my list for really substandard service! hmm maybe it's a ploy they use to ensure they dont get many customers! so sneaky! *suspicious mind goes into overdrive* the timeline goes smthg like this:

0 min: ordered drinks
15 min: chatting away
30 min: some of us started fermenting
40min: generalised fermentation of the gang
50min: distillation of ethanol
1hr: discovered beer orders were taken and for some reason not registered on the asylumist's mind. GOSH!!!! perhaps it was taken for fun.... *roll eyes*

haiyo!!! poor ppl who ordered beer. think they were all rather sian about that! i was wondering why the alcoholic drinks are the last to come! my ice chocolate came much much much earlier... and yet this was more of a pub! *faintz*

it was during this asylum session that i discovered my chinese isn't that great after all. let's have a quiz: what do u call ur fringe? see below for answer.

for my entire life i have been referring to it as fringe. hahah correct what! i have never known what it is known as in chinese! and horrors of horrors, vic actually knows! ok er great. none of us from rv knew, not me not esther not lionel. let's all dig a hole and bury ourselves in shame. esp me, since dad teaches chinese. oops. when i came home and asked my sis, she didnt know either! so it's not my fault, i wasn't taught. must be my parents, never teach me tsk. haah my mum has totally horrified that i didn't know! she sneered at me lor. so bad!

carpooled back home at elevenish that night, it was the first time i drove so many ppl home! felt a great sense of responsiblity! luckily didn't have to put toothpicks in my eyes to stay awake! it's quite fun to go home together, eheh got ppl to chitchat with me! was really dead tired when i got home, and liqi threatened me with death if i were to blog that night... (me qingyuan and her on call the next day) ahha!

the last day of SIP didn't feel like the last day. Guess i didn't have much time to think about it as such. but i started feeling sad when nitecall started. it's my last call! didn't manage to follow liqi after all... cos clement decided not to turn up and liqi didnt feel good taking me away from delice and not giving her a replacement... started call at 7, and the first thing i remember doing is resus! wahhh... and this resus was more serious than the 1st one i saw. this poor pt has disseminated salmonellosis, he was prob vvvvvv sick already. sigh. SpO2 was dropping and he was bradycardiac and hypotensive! luckily he had a femoral catheter and so i was just standing there doing what i can do best: squeezing the normal saline fast! and it was during that when i noticed the patient had a drop of tear that was running down his face. really broke my heart. i wondered if he knew he was v ill, and whether he can actually hear us speaking. was it a coincidence? or was he feeling ill? or scared? or sad? or regretful? i have no clue. there was little i can do to offer comfort except to squeeze his hand. i wonder if he even knew we were there. really do hope he makes it in the end in ICU. =(

it was a crazy crazy crazy nite! we didnt manage to sleep at all! i think delice was vvvvvvvvvvv stressed, her hp rings every time she hangs up a call!! it was scary! it was almost as if the patients made a pact to be ill that day and came to the hospital hand-in-hand! i was quite scared when my ho and mo had to leave me to set a plug and take ultra super alot of blood from a lady... they had to go to another ward so i wasn't going to get any help if i had trouble! and it turned out to be quite a memorable experience:

the auntie was a very nice auntie, but i made the mistake of making small talk before i set plug.

"Hello auntie! Have to set plug ok! Take some blood from you also... you scared of pain?"

"YESSSSSSSS! VERY!!!"

heart flopped onto the floor and languished.

"Auntie! Injection ok! dont move!"

at the word injection, my patient gave me a huge fright. she started screaming! gone was my calm, reasonable, conversant and normal looking patient, replaced by a screaming lady reminiscent of a banshee. oh gosh! i was under tremendous stress! and joline's words popped into my head: it's worse when the curtains are drawn and the pt is screaming! Cos other ppl would be wondering what u are doing!

How true.

so while my patient was screaming murder (it was already quite late at night), i was trying to set a plug. and being from a neuro ward i really don't have much practice and my success rate isn't that great in the 1st place.. had to take a calming breath, mentally blocked out her screaming, stabilise my trembling fingers (i think i have underlying plug-induced parkinsonism) and jab. and throughout the entire time that i was taking 25ml of blood from her, she didn't once stop screaming!!!

when i finally ended, i thought," this is it. i am so going to get scolded! to have caused so much pain!"

imagine my delight when my normal lady came back, and started smiling at me. oh gosh. and instead of scolding me, she beamed and thanked me! actually told me it was not that painful but she was just vvvvv scared of pain! and she was really happy that i only attempted it once. wah!!! auntie!!! u traumatised me u know!! i had a near STEMI! and i think she felt v apologetic. began to recount her horror stories, including one about a "i think it's a student" who had to poke me many many times. and in my heart i was thinking, oops, i am a student. ahah better dont let her know! she felt really bad for traumatising me i think, so much that she even called me a pretty dr when i was looking like smthg out of a toilet bowl, with my hair sticking out in all directions and my scrubs already bearing battle scars of the night (a gigantic iodine stain adorn my R knee region courtesy of a blood culture). Ha! but i really felt deliriously happy after that! imagine! i set a plug successfully! on a first try! under such trying circumstances! i was mighty pleased with myself after that, felt like superwoman! *flexes muscles* me=invincible. hee

1030pm brought me a surprise; esther actually came back to nuh to bring me cakes from coffeebean!!! so sweet of her!!! i have no idea why she is so nice, spoiling me! ahah. aw. felt really touched that she came back especially, and even brought it the the ward i was in! soooooooo very touched!!!! i felt very loved and pampered. haha. very paiseh that her parents drove her back to nuh... for the whole night after that i kept thinking of my cakes; yet i didnt have any time to eat them at all! wanted to share with liqi delice qingyuan they all, but there wasnt even time to drink water lor...

the night took a turn for the worse after that. so many so many cases to see! it all passed in a blur. there were many things to do in ward 61 alone! and my hairstyle just got more and more artistic and wild as the night wears on, and i keep having to don the nasty N95 masks! (my face is too fat; pls make bigger masks!) at around 4am, i was stuporous. trying to preclerk a case for delice, so i was plonked right in front of the computer and trying to pry my eyelids awake. can't remember how long i was there, but i only manage to write three sentences. and i counted: i nodded off a total of 8times! gosh! when delice took over, i inched to the table to rest my head. took off my specs to hold them in my hands, and the next thg i knew i almost dropped them cos i fell aslp. wah! it was really bad! i was tired, VERY hungry! i would have given anythg to sleep. in my deepest darkest hr, liqi appeared! armed with my fav iced milo! YAY! i could have kissed her feet. i was so thirsty my lips were cracking. really woke me up, cos liqi for some weird reason was still v awake! despite her busy social calendar... and she chop-chop went to take the bloods that i was sposed to take. sigh. what will i do without my ho. and then the nurses in the ward must have seen that i was sleepy, they started to gossip with me! and in the 5min gossip we had, i realised a startling truth. which of cos cant be mentioned. ha. it was truly an insight into the nurses' world..

daylight brought with it a weariness i couldnt describe. struggled to brush my teeth lest i become the cause of a resus case. ha. and then it was rounds! funnily enough, i became v wide awake while chatting with all my aunties. i shall miss them! couldnt bring myself to say it was my last day, and that i wont be seeing them anymore. sigh. Mdm N is actually smiling a little each morning now when i greet her, so sweet! and Mdm K is gg for an op on tues, i really regret i wont be around to be with her that day. i became zombie-fied when dr teoh finally came to round with us. i was a walking expressionless puppet. i was no help at all i think. i felt "valproated" haah. didnt even have strength to go take photos! in the end managed to take one with dr teoh and dr raymond.. we were all in blue! the 3 of us in scrubs and the drs in blue shirts. ahah.

hmm. i think i will go back tmr. one last round with liqi, and to say gdbye to my aunties. dont want to disappear without a word. SIP ended! i can't believe this. it must have been one of the most memorable times in my life.




ans to quiz: fringe=liu hai