Funny Career

So, I was thinking, as I inserted my finger into the rectum of a 60yr old gentleman, that this is a strange career choice.

Then, today I walked onto a surgical ward. I had to go past three police officers, then as I went onto the ward there were two more, each with biiiiiig machine guns...exactly like this:

Why? Because there are two guys on the ward who were stabbed and there's a concern that the guys who didn't kill them the first time are going to come back and try again.  This is all while I'm stood about half a metre from one of the guys.  Some guy comes on the ward shooting I'm worried he's not that good a shot...

1/3 of healthcare staff are abused at work, 1/10 are physically assaulted and there's a good chance at some point I'm going to seriously harm a patient in the future...

Funny career.

Was watching some endoscopy today, basically cameras inserted into a patient's mouth or bottom.  During which they sometimes use a local anaesthetic spray.  The drug company states that it should taste like bananas.  The Consultant says "Try it" and puts some on the back of my hand to taste a little.

Couldn't feel the end of my tongue or lips for half an hour.

Fact Me 'till I Fart 1

So, three little facts about your life, you have at one time:

- Been called a blastocyst

- Drank a LOT of your own urine

- Had both male and female genitalia

Patients are COOL

I LOVE patients.  There are moody ones, boring ones, sometimes really nasty and mean ones but mostly they are lovely, kind and...well...patient.  

I met a lovely young lady this week.  I had to take a full history and then present my findings back to the Consultant.  As a result I had to take some blood for cultures (testing for bacteria) and the way I had to take it meant it was painful and I messed up a little and there was blood dripping down her arm on to the chair!  In fact, I had to get someone else to do it in the end...But, after recovering, funnily enough, she was very thankful and when I saw her the next day as she was going home she had a big smile and said thanks!

What's more, the older they get, the better.  The amount of times I've heard an older patient say "You've just got to make do haven't you?" or "It's not so bad is it really?"  or something like it in the face of illness, always with a cheeky grin, you'd have thought that getting ill wasn't so terrible!  They've got such a great attitude to life, is it just their generation or will we be like that when we're older?

Anywho, many Doctor has said that the only reason they enjoy working in the NHS is the patients and I can see why.

An Old Man

Just met an old man who is 80.  Has had tongue cancer, throat cancer and now it’s spread to his bones which means it terminal, he won’t live that much longer.   I was taking a history from him, about his illness and treatment.  I got that but I also got an entire life history, ask any medical student, you can’t talk to an 80 year without getting an entire account of that person’s life.

I asked him at one stage “So, how do you feel?”  To my surprise he started crying, he said he was sad, that he was scared and that he didn’t want to leave his family.  First of all, why was I surprised?  Of course it’s sad, of course you’d be scared!

It made me think about all those speeches we've heard, at funerals or something like that, about how we should live life to the full and how we should treat each day as if it’s our last.  We’ve all heard it so many times, I’m sure, that it's become cliché, to the point where we almost ignore it.

Do any of us really live like that, or even try to?  Do we care that much about doing so?  It seemed to me that this guy was upset because he rather enjoyed living and thought he’d had a good life, so much so that he was sad to leave it.  We should all be so lucky.

A Lovely Reminder...

Well, I heard a story this week about a woman who got cervical cancer and had to have here womb and ovaries removed so I thought I'd remind any women watching to get a Pap smear! Yay! Woo Hoo, cervical smear are exciting! You should all get one!

They aren't that exciting...I know, I know, they aren't pleasant...in fact...pretty unpleasant.  But since cervical cancer accounts for 5% of cancers worldwide...get it done!  And any blokes reading...pester.  Remember it'll be a practice nurse who does and they do MILLIONS.

Factoid - "Pap" is shortened from Human Papilloma Virus (HPV).  HPV is the cause of cervical cancer, found in like 99.5% of cases.  Certain strains (16, 18, 31, 32) are oncogenic...ie the cause cancer.  HPV also causes warts...super.

Blimey

Well, that was mental.

I found myself volunteering to observe a post mortem examination on two paediatric cases the other day.  So I turned up at 9 O’clock at the Pathology Block, walked in with five friends, put on white coats then stepped into the PM room.  It was a pretty un-remarkable place, three tables for the examinations and the freezers at the end for storing the bodies, in the corner was a small pile of bags and then an observation room.

The first shock was that the small bags in the corner actually contained the bodies which were being examined that day.  They were very small, that’s what I remembered, they were very small.  Without even a second to breathe the Pathologist brought out, from one of the bags, the first body, of a 27 week foetus.

Everyone knows what a baby looks like, and so, in a way, knows what to expect a dead baby to look like.  A foetus is a wholly different thing, remember that a foetus should be in the womb for around 40 weeks so a 27 week foetus still has some developing to do and looks, in all honesty, quite scary.  I don’t really want to describe what happened but basically I found myself very dizzy, close to fainting and needing to sit down.  My friends told me later that I had gone completely white, even my lips were white.  All the blood had drained from my face into my feet.  The second case was a ten month old baby, most likely a case of ‘Cot Death’, technically called Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS).  It looked just like a cute, cuddle baby boy should.  It was very hard to think of it as not living, well, it shouldn’t be easy really…should it.

So here are two stories, two of many, where a young child has lost its life and set of parents have been tragically denied the chance to bring it up and care for it.  There’s no crime here, neither baby was killed by intent or negligence, it’s just that life, sometimes, is a shit and bad stuff does happen.  Not just “I lost my iPod” or “I’ve just been fired/dumped/mugged” bad, but painfully, sorrowfully bad.

How on earth can one grasp what has happened to these children?  These two lives never had the chance to see the world, enjoy it, enjoy relationships with other people as I have. Also, how many people realise just how complicated life, and the creation of life, is?

I remember Prof Robert Winston saying that if 100 000 couple had sex tonight, without protection and at a time in the month when the women was fertile there would only be likely 40 000 births.  40% of pregnancies don’t last beyond 12 weeks.  Life is so fragile, we need to treat it with way more respect that we do, like a precious gift that has been entrusted only to each one of us.

I would hope we all take a little moment to think about that.