#Intern

Home Sickness Sleeping Syndrome

| The Ikiguy


After sleeping straight for 14.5 hrs., on the pretext of being tired, I (literally) woke up to the realization that I was missing home. And sleeping was just an escape.


I come hostel around 6.30 pm yesterday, after slogging my ass at the Surgery ward 18, since 9 am, gave my best today since it was the last day of my rotation and I will be joining Orthopedics from the day after.
It was a splendid day, did Blood collections, wrote some discharges and Revived a (suspected Cardiac arrest ? )gasping patient.
Since it was the final day here, I conversed for a long time with my patients (I pray that Krishna* cracks UPSC! He’s suffered a lot already), my nurses and my residents.

When you stay in a hostel you devise up tonnes of the reason for sleeping long, lying like a log of driftwood on the Arabian sea. Mine was, well, ‘I wasn’t feeling like getting up.’

slept at around 7.3opm, friends came bashing at the door stating for a dinner out, bleh, I declined, and went back to my heavenly abode, 10 pm Appa rings and checks whether I am alive or not, at 6.33 am I check whether I am alive or not, then at 9.3o finally, I am done, I am done with sleeping or the excuse of avoiding life altogether.



It hit me hard, all the while, I was feeling sad.
I was feeling empty and touchy, was hugging my bear the whole night, without even realizing that.
I was feeling as if a child has been locked at home, waiting for her parents return.
I was missing home.

It was the feeling of homesick that made me sick with sleep all night.


If you ask hostel people what are their dreams, what they want to do after graduation, contrary to what localite say, that being, Becoming the best Surgeon, Opening up an interior design company, starting up at startup, most humble hostelites, reply, they want a
good, happy, home.

When I used to be a localite I used to not give a second glance to it, but now, when I have become a full time hostelite, I realize the deep emotions, feelings, and hope attached to the latter responses and the word – Home.



“Only hate the road when you’re missing home”- Passenger


Like the way the English band Passenger has beautifully described in their song, “Let her go”, how, the absence of something makes you value the presence of it, only a hostelite knows the true value of the home.
Well, we, most of the localite, just take it for granted.

When you realise your home, is 1,655.7 km far, near the Cape Comorin, aka Kanyakumari, you literally start making plans to do when you get back home, you seek every opportunity to escape, you sketch how you want to get ‘settled’.

Nothing beats a good home when are done with your tough workday eh, maybe that’s why they taught us when
we were kids, ‘Home Sweet Home.

So for all of you out there, who are at the home, express and shower your love when you are still around.

And for all of us, who aren’t, fear not,
Apna time ayega.



[Also do let me know the crazy planning’s you have done to get at home in the comment section below.]
* – Names changed. Or are they?

Till next time,
Pyar Karo dil se, Jeeyo dil se.

Yours only,
Dinesh Raja.
A lover of life.
20th October 2021.

What should I do? My patient just died in my hands.

| The Ikiguy

I am here sitting alone.

7 pm

The eerie silence in the side room makes your body cold but your heart alert.

There’s sounds everywhere. Here, there’s constant ventilator’s beeping of alive patient divided by intermittent alarms of dying ones.Here being sonorous means you are alive.

Welcome to CCU. Where the only thing you dread is loud, red sound.

710pm

As I am sitting here in the side room, I am feeling cold.

I am feeling teary.

I am feeling sad.

I am feeling numb.

My patient just died in my hands. Both metaphorically and medically.

And I can’t walk.

I can’t speak.

All I am feeling is this vast ocean of tortuous silence.

As I write this down, there’s another flood rushing from my eyes.

I am feeling lightheaded, as if just a small prick, and a like a balloon it will fly high away anywhere.

Why did he have to die? I don’t have the answer.

3 of us gave CPR the best we can. And yet we failed. This failure is much deeper than it looks.

As I look down on my palms, I feel there’s blood on it. His blood.

In this moment, I wish to be wrapped around in a warm blanket and be kept in my Amma’s womb. Again.

Take me home Amma. It’s too cold here. It’s too silent here. It’s to heavy here.

It is too heavy to be a healer.

It is too difficult to be a doctor.

It is too emotional to be a medico.

In this moment, I am just feeling my heart beating, mingled with buzzing of bellavista ventilators.

It is beating slowly. It’s afraid if it’s too fast it will make some noise. It just wants to fade away. Fade away into this syrup smelling air of CCU.

My soul wants to escape. Escape from this prison of a body and hug some warm soul tightly. So much tightly that an eternity passes away.

As I look around, my seniors, my super exhausted, super hardworking anesthesia residents are toiling in and out. Not wasting a second. They shed some tears. And move on.

May God bless them. Infinitely.

Move on to othe patients who can be saved. Who can be salvaged.

Salvage, it’s a pretty funny thing no?

One imperfect human determining whether another damaged imperfect can survive or not.

Can live or not.

As I peep out of the side room, my mind wants to hide inside itself. Doesn’t want to face the world. Doesn’t wish to see the cold body of his. Again.

What should I do now? My patient just died in my hands.

As tears flow and drench my white N95 mask, my heart wonders,

What should I do?

Yours Only,

Dinesh Raja.

How knowing your patient’s name properly can save lives?

| The Ikiguy

Why you should double-check the names of the patient while sending to blood bank!?

What’s in a name? Nothing much, but it can save lives.
Or at Atleast prevents preventable deaths!

Do you think a mistake in name can lead to the demise of your patient?
Let me give you some clues.

Mistaken Identity. Mistaken Blood group sample sent. Mistaken Blood transfusion.
Transfusion Reactions.
RIP.

Then what?
Maybe nobody knows the cause and it’s forgotten.
Or worse this can very well get converted into Medico-Legal Case, and one may be charged since it very well comes under medical negligence.

Some of my fellow newbie interns,

  1. Always check the list of patients admitted to your unit/ward.
    It may very well happen that there are multiple patients with the same name.
    Be very careful in such scenarios!
    There is a very high chance of blood samples getting mixed up.
    In such cases do write the whole name or maybe just their initials.

  2. Always double-check the name and registration number of your patient while sending it to the Blood bank.

  3. Always read the file of your patient.
    If not the entire file, at least read the first page of the file, to get to know about the case and the reason you are sampling.

  4. Always call out your patient’s name!
    Don’t just blindly go to some bed after asking your co-intern/staff/resident and start collecting blood like a machine.
    Talk to your patient.
    Listen to them.
    At the back of your mind, cross-check whether it’s the same patient.

  5.  Always have compos mentis.
    Whether you are on Emergency or Casualty, or even ward duty, always be calm and be present in the moment.
    Be conscious of what you are doing.

These are little things, which may big time saviour for you and your patient.
Have you got any more ideas/habits/suggestions to add?
Be my guest, and tell me:)

Till then,
Stay happie, Stay Alive.