WorkTales

The patient had a major abdominal surgery. One of the side effects, as the patient, is that you need time to recover and so you don’t get to eat. Well, you do get “astronaut” food but that isn’t so satisfying.

It was four days later and during a discussion with the surgeon that the patient was informed that she would now be able to have ½ liter of water. Not carbonated or anything crazy like that, just regular flat water. This is really not a fun diet no matter what the circumstances and so the patient asked if it was possible to replace the water with a coke.

Nope, that particular request was not approved by the surgeon, I guess he is an “old school” doctor.

The patient was delivered to the hospital with the symptoms of dizziness and hyperventilation. The hyperventilation was due to not so much for any physical problems but rather what seems to be due to stress.

What could produce so much stress in a young lady to create this condition? It seems that she and her boyfriend were trying to make an important decision earlier in the evening. The choice was whether to watch “Germany’s next top model” or “Games of Thrones” on television. The doctor made his notes in the patients file and departed.

The doctor in charge was a real professional as no more than a slight smile crossed his lips and that was only when he was in the hallway out of sight of the patient.

There is nothing more boring than lying in a hospital room with nothing to do. Television is a fairly painless way to while away the hours, and that may be one of the reasons that you tend to find a TV in each room.

Well, the hospital tried to make the isolation room as livable as possible. It is actually a long room with a 40 inch flat screen mounted on the wall. The television needs to be so large as the patient would be so far away. Honest, it would be nice if it were hanging on the wall at my home, and I guess that I was not the only one thinking this thought.

There was a patient who decided that it would be a nice parting gift. It is different than when you are at hotel where you grab an ashtray or bottle opener. The first thing is it was mounted to the wall but more than that it would require two people to carry it away. So that is exactly what they did, they pulled it out of the wall, and carried out of the room possibly past one or more hospital staff and out the emergency exit.

The isolation room actually never got another television after that.

Back in the prehistoric days of medicine they also had problem with a sophisticated device called the “telephone”. Well, that is my take on this problem as there are quite a few people who work in offices who have telephones that work.. On this day, the doctor was walking around the ward but only receiving phone calls about half the time.

It wasn’t the best day of the year, certainly for this patient. He died of natural causes in the morning, but according to protocol a “second” viewing must be held to ensure that this was his new stable condition. Because it was during a shift change, this second viewing did not take place immediately, but was actually pushed back a few minutes. It was about 2pm when the medical student went up to the ward to speak with a nurse about the second viewing. She was directed to one of the rooms, when she entered it was empty.

Trudge back to the nurse to inform them that the room is empty. There are not a lot of places to hide in a hospital room, but sometimes the patient will be temporarily placed in the bathroom – its not what your thinking. Nobody is dumped into a bathtub, the whole bed is pushed into the bathroom.

A small discussion ensues about the missing patient. I wish I could have seen this one in person. Of course the conversation is finished with the following utterance by the doctor in charge of the ward.

“Whoever has lost the body, has to find the body”

“Speak with the morning shift or whatever”

Well, I guess in once sense it is a small bit of karmic payback as the body was indeed found and this same doctor who was called to do the second viewing. As you might have already guessed, the body had made its way to the morgue. It was seven pm, and despite what you see on television, hardly anyone goes down to the morgue.

This doctor was not planning on going there alone so she brought another doctor. It is difficult to say if the morgue is in the basement or really in a subbasement level of the hospital. It is a very dark very very quiet place. The two doctors were slowly inching along the corridor, perhaps thinking of every horror movie they had ever seen on television, when all of a sudden the phone rings.

Yup, both doctors almost jumped out of their skin. It turns out that they were being called by a fellow doctor who was partying it up elsewhere, the real question was how could you reach me in the subbasement when you cannot reach me on the normal ward. Oh, the patient? Yes, he is still deceased.

As fat Tuesday gets closer and closer the real celebrants come out of the woodwork. It was still a few days before “the day” when another patient was delivered. There was no real costume to speak of, just a pair of “antennae” attached to a headband.

It was when the doctor was taking blood the patient sat up gave a high pitched giggle and then laid down to sleep once more. This patient was probably done celebrating for the night.

When I am given some little medical “gift” such as pen or notepad I am now a bit more curious which pharmaceutical is being advertised. The last one was advertising laxatives.

This time I receive a small pad of post-it notes with Levitrea all over it. This drug was similar to another drug with the more recognizable name of Viagra. I wasn’t sure I wanted this sitting on my desk at work so I gave it to my colleague.

So he wouldn’t be blindsided by someone I did tell him what the medication was. Oscar, one of my colleagues at work sometimes visits us. This time when I came in he did notice the new addition to Zachary’s desk. He started to crack a few jokes at Zachary’s expense. It turned out that Oscar knew exactly what the particular medication was and that in itself did provide a unique insight Oscar’s private life.

It is pretty much the same at all different types of trade fairs whether they computer or medical. There are always small gifts to “buy” people’s interest – pens, post-it notes, mice pads, USB sticks or even bags emblazoned with the company logo.

My wife, as a doctor, does visit these trainings and does get these types of “gifts”. The pens usually go to work. The usually have some words written on them that look more like an eye chart than an actual word.

Well, one of the gifts that she brought home was a small cloth bag with a squiggly line on the side and the word Movicol. It wasn’t really big enough to do any real shopping but it was large enough for holding a magazine as well as a few odds and ends. I used to use it when I was flying a lot so you might have seen me walking through the airport with it.

However, one day when I was being picked up by my wife she commented about my bag. It turns out that the squiggly line was actually an intestine and Movicol is a laxative.

Sometimes I wonder how many people really knew what this meant and what they thought of me wandering around with it.