BluE Scrubs

My heart is still beating very fast. Ran (for a change because it’s A&E) to a cardiac arrest call. Nearly ran over that balding porter with pink cheeks. Managed to just say ‘Oh dear’, and not ‘I’m sorry’. I hope he knows what I meant by that. He shouldn’t have parked the dinner trolley across the corridor like that. Muppett!!

When I got there, the man lying on the bed was probably in his sixties. White as a sheet, just brought in by the ambulance. Story was, a heavy smoker, diagnosed with lung cancer, and now, on a diamorphine pump, cardiac arrest.

This baby, if you whack the dose high enough, the patient just stops breathing. This is what people would call mercy killing. Euthanasia. Now, to me situation translated to he’s waiting for his number, any time, any day. Any hour, any second.

Paramedic chaps, with torn face explained that the family wanted the man resuscitated, that’s why they brought him in. Don’t we all want everybody to live as long as possible? Don’t we all want immortality?

But it seems, if you take a snapshot of the earth population both above ground (which includes in outer space, say what 6 people at a time?) and underground, there is always more in the underground. It seems we all are heading underground. Like it’s a final destination.

So, when enough is enough? Why we fret so much? Nobody has returned to say that being dead is so bad. Is it because those returned as ghosts look so ghastly?

Maybe because inert in all of us, we all do believe in God. We do believe we will have a terrible time getting paid for the bad things we did above ground. An atheist is just a posh word to describe a shallow and confused person. I mean the second before your soul leaves your body, or to a milder extent the second you’re hit with excruciating pain, don’t we all say, Oh my God !!! In almost submissive, almost helpless way? We are programmed to believe.

I have been on call 3 days now and I think my mind is having this parapsychological drama. So many deaths in that time don’t make it any easier.

On Friday, a lady in her 80s needed her belly cut open. Laparotomy we call it. Nobody knows why but she looked a death. I am not saying I can tell who is going to die, but there is something in the way they let you do anything to them and in the way, no needles are too big, which were suggestive. As always, with everybody, I assured her I will look after her. She only said, you do what you have to do love. I never take that well.

After putting all lines, stuck all needles in, she went to sleep. But her blood pressure just stayed in the red zone. I ran around squeezing upping meds. Phenylephrine for those who want to know. It just didn’t stay high enough. Then some more upping meds. This time, adrenaline. When they got to the bowels, it was all gangrenous, the theatre room was filled with stench, absolutely repulsive smell. Smell of shit to be precise. Something I can recall from the small roads in Kowloon.

There is nothing more we could have done. And for a split second, I just wondered, isn’t that just the best way to meet your maker. Completely, seemingly, painfree, under anaesthesia. That is if you are concerned about the pain. But we all know, pain is a perception.

There is science behind it, but why some feel it more than others?

We can’t see pain, we only see the manifestation of it. We perceive people as not in pain if they are not moving, not screaming. But, what is the truth?

The truth, will never be told. The knowledge we have now is just a fraction of the whole knowledge there is to know. Just because we can’t see, doesn’t mean it’s not true. So that makes, faith as the closest thing to truth when everything else hits a brick wall. Going over the wall, you will be delusional. And to some people, the wall is thin and to some unlucky ones, so transparent, people call them ‘sick’.

And..what a gloomy day today as well.

p/s: get well soon bro, please.