BluE Scrubs

Inferior analgesia


Not much to say about the on call last night apart from I could do without the tear inducing almost projectile vomiting vile intermittent pulling and tugging in the epigastric centre radiating to the back. Came on while I was drawing up drugs for the appendisectomy on this 11 year old girl. She’s a redhead, slim and that’s all I could remember.

I was surprised that I could last that long. Liz, my ODA on duty cracked a joke while we were waiting for the girl to ‘wake up’, to take my mind off the pain. Even if I am half dead I can’t leave a half alive patient. That is a hard learnt fact.

It’s about one of the consultants wanting a nuzzle in between her assets. I work with many ODAs and apart from the gender variation, like jellybabies, they also come in different shapes and sizes. Liz has all the right emphasis in the right places if you know what I mean. And the emphasis, not only in the right places they are also lethal. She can suffocate somebody in her chest. Wachacha!

So she said, jokingly that one would need the right tubing for oxygen supply if one wished for a nuzzle and walked away from the aroused crowd earlier that day. Now this persistent joker anaesthetist consultant returned with the green coaxial Bain tubing. Can you believe the little pratt???

Yes Liz, I can. I am sure he would behave rather differently if I was around because I know his wife! So that made me crack up and also made my pain hullahooped I felt like barking and howling at the theatre lightings and then faint cataplexicly till morning.

After OD-ed myself with inferior analgesics I zonked out and remember something about presenting at the audit meeting naked. It was most bizarre I couldn’t even begin to describe how that felt. I can only say that I was relieved it was just a ‘nightmare’. I read in this book once that dreams are sometimes a reflection of things that you do not wish to do or remember.

And that would make sense because I have this presentation to do and the title is ‘AWARENESS IN ANAESTHESIA’. I have been reading round and collecting articles but, really isn’t that exactly what we try to achieve in anaesthesia? To avoid awareness? Maybe I should try that tomorrow. Greet well wishes to start with and confidently say something like ‘In anaesthesia, if your patient complains that he/she is aware during your anaesthesia, you are not doing your job properly, so please make sure you have up to date insurance policy with Medical Defence Union and hit the books. Thank you comrades, good day’. Do you think they’ll clap and let me have the day off?

So back to the dream malarkey, I am also aware that when somebody close to you moved on, passed away, left you or anything to that effect, all of a sudden your dreams frequent him as the leading role.

Him by the beach having a massage by another woman, him in IKEA with you, him driving and you sing Misha Omar song (because that’s the only song I know the lyrics more than a line, wait that’s a lie), him helping you pack, him on a merry-go-round swing, and him backpacking with you in Amsterdam and run naked in a field full of pink tulips? I know, freaky but it’s understandable, because it’s something your brain is still having problems refreshing. Be calm my little soul.

I just wish we have a turn off switch for all this mental and emotional torture. It kills humour.

So we got palm oil tree seeds from Ghana? Well I never..