the glass half full...

It's been exactly a year since I graduated from med school … It is a pleasure to end July this year with a day which is really a new beginning …

Ever since I started working, I've been concentrated on what can I bring to the patient …but something happened which let me turn to what the patient brings to me .All too often, time and events lead me, and quite a few of my colleagues, to view the patients as tireless killers   of our energy, and that for all practical purposes we must go on giving until we die, or give up this unequal struggle with nature and her diseases. This is to negate the view of patients as food not just in the sense of giving me my daily bread and butter, but also in the sense of nourishing my personality.

They do so by telling you about yourself...see, I sometimes totally into the idea that I'm nice and brilliant then there are times when I am absolutely sure that I'm clumsy and inadequate, but it takes my patients to shatter these illusions, and to show me that simply some days I'm good and some days I'm bad .Thanks to them, I never stay the same. After practicing medicine for a little less than a year now, my mind has already become occupied by ghosts of former patients, counseling me, reminding me of all the things I can not control ….

I don’t know if I will always think this way but for now I truly believe that I'm lucky to work in a profession in which experience counts more than knowledge ,and it is to boost  my experience that I've decided to turn away from learning by rote  …Its been exactly a year since I graduated and for this anniversary I have few resolutions to stick to hopefully;  read  novels , make some real friends , travel far and try to keep forever curious ,for then ,If I'm lucky I'll stand to gain what I think every doctor wish to have : a rich and compassionate personality and I will hopefully be  motivated enough to see  this tiresome and inconvenient patient  ,who challenges me now, into a lovable series of imperfections, which  reflects my own imperfections… 

ER Gossip

'This is the medical section …. The surgical section is this way'

'Where???Where??'

'Sir you've just passed it'

'Those people always pass the triage, the surgery and come straight to us!'

'They're led by national guards, god fathers of stupidity, what do u expect?!' I cant help it sometimes , thank god my attending was sunni that day or else I would've really entered a minefield :P..

'I feel lucky that I don’t have to deal with surgical ER anymore'

'Yea but Medical ER has its own challenges for junior doctors'

'As long as no blasts and explosions I'm happy'

'Then how come you want to be a surgeon?'

'That’s different, I …'

Please my father …

'I'll take the case'

That’s the beauty of ER gossip!I can't remember the last time where I actually finished a conversation …not that it was interesting but it is always like this...

..................................................................................

'Whats that book ?'

'Its  a review for an exam I want to take'

'When?'

'September'

'With all these duties !!!when are you going to find the time to study.. plus its a difficult test ..you'll fail'

Idiot I will do my best to pass just because he said that  

'It's cheap I can retake it ..'

'but…'

Doc..She took pills lots of them .she isn’t breathing  please  …

I know this might sound mean to you but this suicide lady came right in time ..she made it by the way ..dont worry   

Something is definitely wrong

'you didnt recognize me, did you ?'

I put down my stethoscope and tried to think harder…she looks like a doctor or a med student  so I took an educated guess ...

'I'm terribly sorry ..let me see we worked together… uhhh maybe in the internship ?'

'No ...we didn’t ' she wasn’t so nice when she said it I have no idea why !

'Ok '

'I knew you didn’t know me from the way you were talking…I'm Nibra we work together at …'some volunteer stuff

'Oh of course Nibra '

Nothing I said next made her feel any better .. not that I said much actually... 

And this was just 5 hours after the beginning of my duty … I was totally worn out ..headache, backache, stomachache  hungry, dehydrated …you name I had it ..I'm not always like that but I was terribly sick that day the last thing I needed is the nurse shouting…

Doc DOC DOC ..he stopped breathing '

'Come on give me a break… not now Hajji I cant do CPR now…I'm too tired'

30 minutes later …

'Announce the time of death ' this happened to be the head of the ER which happened to stick in the ER section I was running for the entire period of ma shift

'Me ?'

 it's not my bloody job… it’s the attending's … you know something by the time I was writing his death note   I wished it was mine…

'You look bit uncomfortable?' my senior just came back from his lunch break

Uncomfortable ? Nooo I'm fine'

No seriously leave…'

How sweet of him, letting me lose a whole 10 minutes before the end of my duty!

I'm so lucky don’t you think ?

No regrets ...No regrets at all

In an Iraqi Medical ward …

'Thank Allah we now know what caused his death'

This was my attending's way of consoling the family of the deceased just minutes after he announced him dead

I was standing next to him thinking 'bloody hell!  What kinda statement is that? I know I've been practicing for less than a year but its common sense. Ok I do agree that the guy is dead from a medical disease with some fancy name but if you are so happy that u found out about it …his family might not share the same enthusiasm….  right !?'

I keep on hearing how insensitive doctors are but that day I witnessed it myself …. You know what I can't blame him…10 years ago when he was a med student  breaking bad news wasn’t part of the syllabus I guess but again  this doesn’t completely give an excuse for how stupidly he handled it…

A positive thing about this? Well the whole 'you son is dead ' thing is not that easy for me and I dont think I will be anytime soon but that day I felt good about ma self...at least I'm not as bad as him :P

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

In an Iraqi ER….

'He's bleeding into his brain '

'No he is not'

'Some med talk to prove ma point'

'Some babbling to prove his '

'I still think he needs a CT scan of his brain'

'He's got no indications for it '

Although I thought that he's killing the patient with his treatment …I couldn’t argue  with him more  ..he's not just ma attending he's got enough power to make me suffer …so I stopped

10 min later I just couldn’t I mean I felt so guilty ..so I present the case to  other ER seniors most  agree with me scientifically but no one seems to care about the patient …

Everybody is talking nowadays about 'Managed Care' , i.e you lower your expenses if you can narrow down your differential diagnosis with the least number of tests…well let me tell you ma opinion this is not Managed care its ' Damaged care '

You wanna know what happened next …

I got busy with other patients and my attending discharged the guy…yes he discharged him home ….

Well great ….good for the hospital

'sigh'

……………………………………………………………………

In the Medical floors again !...

'Would you leave the books for a sec? Do you know the 'shahroora'

'An old actress??'

'How come they're making an entire series about her she was a s** bag….'.

He kept on talking for about half an hour or so

'Excuse me doctor' this was the 'rescue' nurse :P 'you have a new admission'

'Thank Allah… rescue I thought so I stood up to go see the patient'

'Where are you going?'

'To …lets see M.KALAD'

'He's been already checked at the ER… Let me tell you something …always put yourself above the patients. Take care of your health'

'I'm …fine' seriously I was fine  

Thank god he followed his own advice, he left the ward to sleep on duty!! .. you know he did me and the patients a huge favor the first 6 hours of the duty was horrible  because of him , well at least partly!!!

I'm not in love

I finally had this idea of telling him that  through a song ..just for the record, I thought its a bad idea from the start but I did it anyways... I sent him 'I'm not in love'  by 10cc with lyrics!! ...yea so insensitive and tremendously stupid and this is not a conclusion... it was simply my opinion from the start...
wat do i feel right now ? well ... pure guilt mingled with relief maybe i dunno .. I just have to face the fact that I couldn't have done it face to face ...

 Now? everything is worse as expected ....he didnt take it so well which makes working with him something next to impossible ...which means I have to change departments which means more working hours ..which if means anything at all then it just solidifies the fact that ,when it comes to me and guys, stupidity has no limits ...

great... said it now I can go study

Birthday Girl

My birthday was few days ago …that day , together with today's explosion, got me  into thinking of a rather funny question ….Can anyone tell me why am I still alive ?! Anyone?!! one might say, 24 years is not a lot… but I'm livin in a  war zone for god sake ….quite a few  colleagues and friends ,people my age, had already kicked the bucket and today I was thinking why it's taking me so long…

The irony is I didn’t get killed when the death poll in Iraq , few years back ,was  3000 a month that’s 100 a day… 2 and a half millions lives and still counting …I mean just do the math ,my odds are high ,so what's going on here?! Why on earth am I still here? Lucky or merely doomed?.. I don’t know anymore really

They say unless a man undertakes more than he can possibly do ,he will never do all that he can …I dont think thats true anymore 

The closest I came to death was ,3 years ago, when I missed an explosion by 2-3 min , I can still vividly remember waiting for my university  bus and once it left , the bus stop was like   BANG!! I thought I was lucky at the time, now; I seriously doubt that.

Not a birthday mode? totally agree …but  tell that to people who insist to make our life worse …tell that to ma seniors who think  I'm a robot  …. Well I'm not …I wish you can tell that also to the people I love…

I shouldn’t feel this way ….why shouldn’t I? coz no one has ever  felt what I'm feelin now?!you think that ? no one occasionally gets into fed –up-I- can't-do –all-of this-at once mode…this doesn’t happen to  anyone no?  ..Just me seriously mankind gimme a break I want to fall this time … I'm blue and I'm happy that I'm blue  

Its your fault

If you're following my posts well ,you probably know that I'm learning French at the moment … In fact ,I've been doing this one class a week for 8 months now…. every single Tuesday, you kinda get  the idea that it's not just a random event, it becomes part of my routine ..This week I didn’t go .Why? I forgot to go!

The next day, I had a hospital duty and I forgot to go too! and although I can't say that my work is a fixed routine coz my hours are constantly changing ;there are weeks when I do 36 hours only and others with 70 hrs or sometimes even more .. But if you know that I'm the one who is responsible for setting the schedule for the junior doctors in the department, it's really hard to believe that you can forget a schedule which you both set, print then display for all to follow …

Don’t you worry about my patients … though 3 hours late, I managed to remember my duty…How? I don’t know… I guess I remembered it the same way I forgot about it…

Later that day…

' I'm sorry I brought you all the way to the blood bank ,but you know , O -ve blood should be received personally by a doctor, actually all –ve blood types ,its really scarce'  

'Yea it's ok'

'Now if you can just write down your name and sign here'

It took me a few seconds to write my name down .Why? For a while I couldn’t recall my surname… it was late and I was tired but I don’t think its an excuse to forget your own name! …

I told my dad about forgetting our family name and he was shocked but he managed to say ' it happens'! I think he secretly believes that I totally lost it : )  but you know what's funny ? He blamed it all on my mom .Why? I have no clue. It's one of those peculiar Arabic traditions I guess: P