Monday, September 13, 2004

God was the first anaesthetist

I swear to God I wasn't prepared for today's grilling by the Professor of history of anaesthesia. As usual I was late for the morning epidural follow up, however he was even later, so I was rather smitten that I got there before he did!

We did a quick sweep through the floor and all the ladies seemed to be rather satisfied with our service. (No double meaning intended).

He went around complaining bitterly about how the beds from the labour wards are backwards, and third world with stupid head post recliner , which will serve it's purpose if it actually came down WITH the patient. He went on and on and on.This bed thingymijigy must have caused him some sleepless nights.

A few ladies later, I found myself with him in this room with a trolley and an exquisite selection of larungoscopes. He was going to ask me to name them all...please don't please don't..

'Now Naj, do you know the names of all these blades?'

The images of the blades kept flashing and moving so quickly before my eyes, I found myself rubbing my left eye vigorously. I had an idea..So i picked up the far right one. Flip it open and there it is. It's embossed Macintosh! I flip it back in and the light bulb at the end flickered off. Confidently I said 'Mcintosh'.

He didn't pay much attention to the answer. I supposed it was an easy one. Gosh my memory is really letting me down these days. He picked up a rather wonky looking one and I know that one! I went 'Polio!'. Tell me about Polio laryngoscope. I went terkedu....

It was called Polio because when Polio was an endemic many people died from respiratory failure as the polio progressively affecting the breathing muscles. So what these clever people did was to put the victims in a box which came right up to the chin. A negative pressure is applied to the outside of the chest wall and this generates expansion of the lungs! Clever innit?


However there are times that they had to intubate and stick a great big tube down the throat, and it was proven to be difficult with the edges of the box in the way. So they created Polio blade! 10 marks for you young lady!

We talked about history which to my amazement , wasn't registered as boring at all. It's inspired me to blog it. So it must have been interesting.

I did earlier tonight read up about Henry Hill Hickmann and his work on animals. Back in 1842, this chap stuck a poor rat in a box and let it breath carbon dioxide. As the creature slowly fluctuating it's level of consciousness, he found that he could actually chop the tail off without the animal moving at all.


He woke the rat up and the next day did the same thing again and chopped off the ears....yes he did that...and that was called anaesthesia then. Freakkkyyyyyyy!!!

I started to like this guy. If only I can just download everything that he has stored in his cerebral cortex. Exam will be half a battle. A few famous people later, he let me off with a rather philosophical remark.

I honestly can't remember how we got to that point but basically he was just trying to sell anaesthesia to me..Possibly it was to do with how Queen Vicky had chloroform for childbirth and back then you are not suppose to get any pain relief, because it was against the church teachings.You were suppose to suffer.Now that doesn't make sense.


I wasn't sure if he was trying to say that us anaesthetists are doing the work of God in that we put people to sleep and wake them up again.

'God put Adam to sleep, then only He took Adam's rib to create Eve'

He didn't need to do that though because I am now certain that I cannot and will not do anything else. This is now my life and will continue to be ..pinch me!

Comments:
Dr Najmiah Khaiessa Ahmad.
Anaesthetist.


-2006 December 6th-
 
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