1st call

I survived my first call!

Actually on the whole, it was a very good call by all measures. I had 8 admissions and managed to get 2 hours of sleep.

But I was really dying in the middle of call. Most of my admissions came in from 4pm to 12pm and i think out of 8, 5 went into high dependency ward and required lots of urgent investigations. I probably became tbe On-call radiologist's new found enemy. Was calling him every half an hour to arrange for urgent scans for different patients. And in addition, I was constantly running to and fro from A&E to the wards. I was pretty slow too I guess. Was kinda lost initially and ended up getting pushed around between A&E staff and ward staff. Sighz..... Only managed to find time to change into scrubs around 2am in the morning.

And on top of all these, I was having a horrible headache. I skipped dinner cos there was no time, which made the headache even worse. Managed to get ponstan from one of the ward nurses and took the meds after a cup of milo, only to throw everything up a while later. Felt slightly better after throwing up but the headache got worse +++ . But had to settle an urgent referral of a patient to another specialist immediately so dragged myself to the ward, hoping I wont end up collapsing along the corridors requiring resuscitation. . Felt like running away from hospital. For the first time I had regrets. I started thinking about whether this was what I wanted to do after all. Was really at breaking point by then. Finally decided that I really needed a break after settling the blue letter i.e. referral letter. Met Belle in the wards as I was getting another cup of milo from the vending machine. Thanks Belle for sitting down with me for a while even when your call was getting really busy! Yep, so went to lie down for abt 20 min after that before proceeding on to finish up the rest of the changes. Felt a lot better after that.....

Finished clerking and changes around 3.30. Updated the list for the next day and went to bed. My MO's sms to me before I went to get some sleep: Hope to see you only at rounds in the morning! Haha.....

Managed to get about 2 hours of sleep unlike the passive HO whose phone was ringing every ten minutes as he desperately tried to get some sleep.

I was really glad to have a very supportive MO. It was harder in the earlier part of the evening as she was operating and I was all on my own. Things got slightly better after she came down.

I guess on the whole, I take it as a personal achievement for surviving through this call. Even though having only 8 admissions is considered a luxury +++.

I bumped into one of the patients I saw during my call in the wards this morning.

"Hey doctor, u stay the whole night is it? Whoa, u must be tired ah! Go and rest ok. Oh ya, thanks for taking care of me yesterday ah. My pain is a lot better now. Thanks ah doctor! " (even though it was my reg who prescribed the meds which relieved the pain. haha.....)

All that suffering during the call didnt go to waste.....