Brotherly love

My last week at the hospital was spent in the A&E department, which is great because of the variety of cases you get to see.  From people with gangrene, to miscarriages, to head injuries, to the man who had to have an expensive ring cut off his finger.  I never knew that they had a special little ring-cutter for cases like that! 

On one evening, when I had decided to stay a little later in A&E, a young man was brought in with stab wounds, and placed in cubicle 4.  Looking at the X-ray, the doctor told me that there was a right-sided pneumothorax, and that he would insert a chest drain.  Having never seen a chest drain, I was keen to watch as the doctor injected a little lignocaine, made his incision and inserted the drain, before tying some seemingly very complicated knots to keep it in place.  The procedure completed, I decided to take a break, wandering upstairs to keep Richard company for a few minutes.  Keen to conduct a delivery, he was keeping vigil by the bedside of the only woman in active labour. 

When I went back down to A&E, I found myself I cubicle 3, looking at an almost identical young man with a stab wound.  He was even wearing the same pyjamas as the one I had seen only 10 minutes earlier!  The doctor was preparing to insert a chest drain for a left-sided pnuemothrax.  I had severe deja-vu.  ”Did they come from the same fight?”  I asked. 
“They are brothers!”  The nurse told me.  The next day, Richard saw the two brothers on the surgical ward, recovering from their injuries.  Apparently, it was a third brother who had stabbed them both!

I also had my first personal experience with suspected swine flu.  It was early in the morning, and there weren’t many patients.  The doctor asked me to examine the patient in cubicle 6, so asked for the triage form, which would tell me roughly what the patient’s complaint was, as well as give me space to write the history.  “You don’t need it,” the doctor told me, so I went to the cubicle, introduced myself, and asked what was the matter.  “Oh, I have a terrible headache and a terrible cough,” the patient told me.  She looked very ill.  “And I feel dizzy and I have joint pains and a pain in my stomach.”  I asked a few more questions, then reported back to the doctor.  He asked me to so a physical examination, which was difficult, since the patient kept retching into a bag.  “What do you think?”  The doctor asked me when I returned.  “Probably flu,” I said, “What do you think?”
“Yep, I’m going to swab her for H1N1″ said the doctor, putting on his nice N95 mask and two pairs of gloves, “Don’t you have one of these masks?”   He went away to swab the patient, and I sat feeling slightly annoyed and concerned that I might have just caught swine flu!

Anyway, its been two weeks since my return from Africa, so its safe to say that if I had caught swine flu from the patient, I would have got sick already by now!  I am enjoying being at home with home-cooked meals and no 5.30am starts!  Next week I’ll be heading back to uni, and I’m hoping that some of the things I learnt in Botswana will prove useful in the year to come.  I don’t know when or where my next big trip will be, so for now I guess its time to let my blog rest for  a little while..