Updates...

Lai i sympathize with you.

So far, i've worked with psychotic nurses, yelled at by irrational lowly educated parents of patients, got pissed off by a mere ward clerk who thinks she's a doctor and tries to admit a patient without informing me, and a surgeon whose temper flares at a drop of the hat.

Then talk about surgical complications i've witnessed. Today's was the worse. We were always told that the risk of perforation in endoscopies in general was about 1 in 3000. Today was that 1.

One moment i was standing behind the surgeon in the scope room getting ready to pass him the guide wire, and the next moment, i see this ugly mess on the screen which immediately triggered a heart-sinking feeling... and everyone else just stared at the screen in silence.

This patient, who has an oesophageal cancer and came for an oesophageal dilatation in order to help him with swallowing his food, will probably not be able to eat anything via his mouth again. The irony. I wonder, if we didn't even attempt the procedure, how many good months he can get as compared to the dire situation he is in now.

One moment he's going to sleep on the table and next moment he wakes up in ICU with multiple tubes and lines coming out from him. A scary thought.

On my way home, i was glad that i wrote down perforation on the list of other complications in the consent form for another patient's gastroscopy. Now i will never forget to mention it ever again.