not so productive this time

Dear Blog,

Dr. *** asked us...wait, no.. ordered us to clerk at least 2 patients everyday. Lately, I have been doing just that. But today, many patients were sleeping lah, family visit lah and stuff. So, not very productive I guess.

But procedure-wise, it was productive.

Let's see...I arrived at the ward at 8.30-ish. Went to ward 1, ran into Assila and Amzar. So, I joined them to look for our "victims". No such luck. We figured, maybe other wards ok kot...so ward 2 was next. Ran into Fatin pulak. No compliance from patients there too. Next stop, ward 4. There, Fatin and I clerked a patient diagnosed as having UTI. In the midst of our clerking, Assila interrupted us saying our class with Dr. Sheikh started a few minutes ago (whoops~). So, clerking cut short....briskwalked our way to the Endoscopy Center on the 1st floor.

After that, went to ward 5 and observed the staff nurse insert a urinary catheter and I did that procedure too on another patient afterwards, with the help of Rowaidah, Chupa and the rest. Funny, the first "hole" I catheterized, no urine came out. Turns out, it wasn't the urethra...it was the vagina lol (again, whoops~).

Later, we observed the Lumbar Puncture (LP). We didn't wanna go initially coz we've seen it before, but it's a good thing we changed our minds. This time, the CSF wasn't clear (like water)...it was yellowish, turbid (indicates bacterial meningitis) and the opening pressure was raised..more than 20cm H2O, which is abnormal obviously. That's really interesting coz we rarely get cases like these and for me to see that was for sheer luck. Even the doctors reacted this way...

"(held their breaths for a sec, then exhaled)...whoaa".

Rowaidah has observed 5 LPs, and this was her first turbid CSF. It's that "common".

We went to ward 1 later to see if there were any patients nice enough to be clerked. Nope. However, a friend told us that a procedure was being done in the Procedure Room by Dr. Rafidah (a very, very nice, beautiful and stylo-milo doctor. sangat suka dia! hehe) and Dr. Asri (uhh..afraid to face him ever since my PE screw-up) was there too. We observed a haemopneumothorax (haemo=blood, pneumo=air, thorax=thoracic region) pleural tap, if not mistaken...another uncommon procedure. I've seen pleural tap with pus-like pleural fluid coming out, but this...blood was coming out of the tube. The whole procedure was a mess coz there was some sort of complication. The patient was noted to have a worsened tachypnoea (increase in breathing rate). The doctors were all on edge so in the end we got halau-ed (ouch!) out.

Usually, after our lungs are be ridden of those fluids (can also be air and blood too) surrounding the organ...we would feel better and less breathless. That's why the doctors were worried if the patient's lung was actually poked initially or during a chest tube procedure done days before this. But, they checked for blood clotting in the containers to see whether the blood was actually from the pleural space...or blood vessels near the lungs. No clotting was found, therefore it must be from the pleural space.

So, after kene halau we went to the tutorial room discussed a bit about some stuff and...went back to our respective dorms before 5pm (eat your heart out Dr. ***).

The End

.a very sleepy l e n a.