Trypanophobia

(yay... I'm blogging again.)

Last week I did one all-night shift out of interest for seeing the situation in the Accidents and Emergency dept in Newham Hospital (because that's when usually the real actions of A&E kick in.) The scenario wasn't as close as I expected to be, like those in ER. It was rather quiet, chilled out night (good for the hospital staff, bad for a student like me). However, it still rather very rewarding night.

The night thought me that I'm no superman, especially in A&E. I couldn't solve everything (if I could, I would have been Dr Gregory House). I took a history from a Thai lady who had majority of the common neurological presenting complaints to a doctor, and it took one hour just to complete the task. Her anxious family members (in total 4 of them being the same small cubicle) were obviously very tired (of waiting for me to finish). Was rather frustrating that I still couldn't give a definite diagnosis at the end of it. I didn't know what she truly has. If I were the doctor, I would have gone all out to get to the bottom of this.... maybe because of my guilt of not knowing enough medicine. I need to learn to cope with insufficiency, being aware that we have our own human limits. That's why medicine would need to have many specialities so that some us would be more knowlegable in one field and less in another.

Just when you thought you are about to give up on yourself, sometimes in life there would be someone that still continues to hope on you. I learnt this, rather humbly, at 5.00am, when this 25 year-old gentleman, Mr NM, a long-standing asthma sufferer was brought in by ambulance for his worsening breathlessness. He was very afraid of needles. I initially told him that I would be able to cannulate him. But after inspecting his veins, which appeared rather small and hard to cannulate on, I said would not want too - never had positive experience with this issue. I told him that I'll one of the nurses to do it. I told him that if I were to do it, it potentially meant having several attempts at cannulating before success, and I didn't to particularly distressed a trypanophobiac like him. To my surprise, he insisted that I gave it a try nonetheless despite all my warnings. And guess what? I succeeded! I could feel that both of us were practically shaking from our own fears and embarrassements of the needle. When all done, we instantly exchanged chains of apologies. I was sorry that I caused him much discomfort; he, for being scared of needles. I must say he had been a very brave man.

Oh yes, and the Thai lady with neuro problems was afraid of cannulaes too. When she saw the cannulae put into her hand, after a doctor examined her, she immediately began to cry. The concerns I digged out of her was that she thought her condition was something very serious (although that was still a matter of debate), that was why she had this cannulae in. When in fact, and this was what I told her, 'cannulae is a common procedure that is given to everyone who comes into the A&E dept'. Being a student, who is already used to whole hospital thing, I sometimes forget that things that are very trivial to me may be something regarded as life-threatening to patients. I guess that's where all the communication skills taught at med school become useful in handling this situation.

(and in conjunction with the release of the new Bond movie sequal: The names' Wilson.... Aaron Wilson.)