blackpeanut.com

This is emo post, read at ur own risk.

And no, I don’t mean the real brain thrombosis.

Yesterday I overnight-ed in the hospital. The so called ‘on-call’ but I guess it is more like an off-call, because nobody really cares what I would do and how I spent my time. Anyway, it was quite a good night with patients that test my brain. Working with the physicians on-call is very challenging because she always want feedback from us, and she wants it fast, and I gotta think fast, so that I would look like a complete idiot 1 month towards my graduation.

Anyway, I felt bad because this happened.

There was a woman who came in with complains of abdomen pain, and basically she is just mumbling pain all the time. During examinations she has a big post-op hernia at the left flank, almost the size of a volleyball (I said almost, maybe just 1 or 2 cm smaller by diameter). The surgeon on-call (I tag him because I’m having my surgery cycle now), once saw the hernia, claimed the patient and left the room while waiting for the physician to come.

Well, having so much time there, I took a closer look at her, and happened to find out that she experience pain on her right shin (pain at gastrocnemius muscles on the right). I automatically proceed with its palpation (Mosesa signs) and told her to try to dorsiflex her ankle. Both of the signs came out to be positive. I told the physician on-call and she agreed with my findings. I thought that since she knew it already, most probably she would include it into her conclusion on the patient’s history.

The next morning, when I was presenting this patient (in class, not bed side) to my teacher, it struck me that which diagnosis should be the first? I stopped to think.

DVT obviously is more dangerous. BUT, later on when I look back at the patient’s history, there is nothing about the DVT. The physician didn’t include it as it is a surgical disease and the surgeon is not informed about my findings.

So I thought maybe I could tell my prof, show him the signs, and hopefully she got admitted with her proper pathology, which is in another department.

And the next thing I know! The son came and took her back home. Well, the son is psycho and I guess he wants his mum to die earlier. A volleyball size post-op hernia and he wants to take him home?

I felt kinda guilty for being brain blocked when I see the surgeons all the time but didn’t mention my findings to him. All I had in mine is who am I to say anything? I’m just a small peanut. Plus lack of experience, lack of knowledge, lack of thinking skill (this one is obvious since I didn’t say a word).

I think I would feel even guilty if she came in with PE these few days or just *choi* touch wood, die because of a PE instead of the diagnosis that she got from the surgeons.

Since the woman was not there, my prof tried to ask the docs around whether they see her legs or not. And all they could say is some arthritis. What do you mean by some arthritis? It is so obvious it is not arthritis lah!

Even thou I don’t know who I want to be in the future, but I definitely don’t want to be like them. Didn’t see but answer? That is so damn dishonest.

But I was stupid, I kept quiet. Garggghhhh…