Clubbing

 

lol. No. Not talking about late night dancing and drinks. Although this did happen late Saturday night. A man came in because he accidentally slit his wrist.. but I could not take my eyes off his fingers.

It was gross clubbing of his fingers.. and his toes. Story goes that he started developing it since he was 13 years old. He was born a healthy child with no congenital heart diseases. When his mother was admitted into the ward weeks ago, the specialists during their rounds noted his fingers and suggested for further investigations. Turns out he is disease-free.. which is odd. Because clubbing usually is a sign for several diseases and if you’re curious to know, read it on Wikipedia.

Spoke to him about what life is like having such oddly shaped fingers. He does have difficulty eating with his hands, he can’t pick up fine small objects from flat surfaces and even trimming his nails are a hassle. Poor guy.

Some dynamics have changed in ED recently. Firstly are the oncalls we’re required to do. Instead of the three shifts in two days stunt we had to perform twice a week, which I wrote of before… now we have to do four in two days… and still no day offs for post-call. FOUR shifts in two days… that means, morning shift, afternoon shift, night shift, immediately followed by the morning shift after. According to our auditing people, we aren’t fulfilling enough hours to claim our oncall money (speaking of which, I have not received ANY money for my crazy oncalls I’ve done since stepping into ED because of all this nonsensical queries! 😦 ) We fought for a short break during one of those shifts because there was absolutely no way we could survive four shifts in a row! So in the mercy of our bosses, we were granted a short break from 5pm to 9pm, after which we were required to report back for duty. Now that’s not so short a break for me, given that I have to drive home, in the after-hours jam, reach home, just in time for some dinner, a shower and I’m off to work again. No more nap time as before.

We have more house-officers in ED now. Think our latest number is 24 now? Which is great. We have at least 2 in yellow and resus. Can’t add more numbers in the green zone rooms because of the lack of space. Yes, in some ways the load has lightened up a lot. But also for some reason, the number of patients have increased significantly in the recent months too. Recession I suppose… or is there really? Still see malls bustling of people shopping and buying.

I’m feeling poor. lol.