Life of a medical student

Fun and games

My love for knowledge and working with people is a huge part of me but there is also another side of me that is probably full of shit. I have a lame, odd sense of humour and I tend to laugh in the most inappropriate situations. No jokes. I do not know how I haven't been kicked out of the hospitals yet. No, I will never laugh at someone's pain or suffering. But sometimes the situations themselves are so unexpected and hilarious that you can't help it. Here are some examples:

Event 1: It was a cold winter's evening working on call in casualty. Young little old me (fourth year me) was working alongside fellow six year students in orthopaedic rotation. (Broken bones and stuff – how cool! Well...cool for us...not for the patient. Sorry.) One particular patient came in around seven pm. A fifteen year old boy that broke his left clavicle in a game of soccer. You could even see the tenting of the skin on basic inspection. This young boy had just returned from radiology where he went for X-rays and was awaiting for surgery. We students were given the instruction to draw blood and put up a drip for him. Simple right? You have no idea. A sixth year female colleague of mine took over this patient and we stood around watching. Moral support and such. I don't know what this girl was thinking but she made it a lot more complicated than it needed to be. Instead of drawing the blood and then putting up a drip she decided to do both together. So visualise this. A fifteen year old boy sitting on a black couch, eyes closed and working on steadying his breathing (no one likes needles). The sixth year student pricked him with a gelco and tried to simultaneously open the blood tube caps. All of a sudden there was blood pooling everywhere. Down his arm, on the couch, onto the floor and here I am thinking "I am never ever sitting on those couches". The student tried to get it under control and then attempted to attach the drip. Now usually with a drip you have to flush the line so that no air enters the vein of the patient. You prep beforehand and flush the line over the sink as liquid does tend to squirt out. For some odd reason the sixth year student did not do this. She flushed the line next to the boy and splashed the liquid across his pants. And there he is eyes still closed and breathing deeply. In and out. In and out. I had to hide behind my friend because I was laughing so hard. Not at his pain. Never. I was laughing at the thought "What was the most traumatic experience for this fifteen year old kid? Breaking his clavicle? No way. Getting a drip put up!" It didn't help that the next patient that came in that night was a middle age man that broke his pinkie toe (like it was ninety degrees twisted to the side) that he bumped against a cupboard while leaving the bathroom. I laughed at the unexpectedness of the story but at least his wife was laughing right there next to him so that was okay. The rest of the evening was alas uneventful after that.

Event 2: In my Internal Medicine I was rotating with a foreign exchange student from Mauritius. We were working at one of the public hospitals that has an open floor plan which basically means that each ward has open doors to the outside garden which is really nice for the patients. During our ward round birds (especially pigeons) tend to fly in and out. They sometime build nests in the vents. Unhygienic I know but it happens. On a particular morning round in ward 13 the pigeons were quiet aggressive. One white one would screech out and dramatically swoop in, sit on the vent before dramatically swooping out again. Each time this happened my Mauritian friend would jump a foot in the air in fright. It was hilarious. Keep in mind we were busy following doctors on a ward round and supposed to be listening to the patient cases and being serious because this is serious stuff. We carried on but then again this bird swooped in right over my friends head and he was starting to get really annoyed. Looking around all paranoid and on guard. He even threw his pen at the bird which make it screech even louder. So I'm laughing at this weird thing happening this early in the morning and I said to my friend "Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No it's – shit it's a bird. It's a bird. Duck for cover!" which made me laugh even more as I find myself so funny. The doctors were not very impressed. Understandably so – but it was so distracting.

Event 3: Another casualty scenario. I was asked to put up a catheter for a male patient. This was my first one and although I've watched other students doing it I was still nervous. It is a pretty simple procedure so it was inconvenient that I fucked it up. When I attached the catheter to the catheter bag I unknowingly loosened/opened the wrong side and all the pee from the patient's bladder flooded the floor. And there was me thinking "oh shit oh shit oh shit". I quickly closed the catheter bag and finished with the patient before cleaning up the mess. Thank goodness there was a patient was gangrene foot in the bed next door so the nursing staff didn't notice the smell and yell at me (not so lucky for the gangrene patient I know). After cleaning everything up and not registering that it was kind of gross...I look down and see that my right shoe is wet. (Crying noises). When we had a five minute break I messaged my sister in irritation – "I have piss on my shoe and it's not even mine!" Suffice to say she found this hilarious. I was unimpressed. So not cool dude.

I have a lot of random moments from working in the hospitals. It doesn't help that when I get tired I find everything funny and end up crying of laughter. Someone will exclaim a word in shock and I would start laughing. And you can imagine that in this line of work being tired is the normal baseline state of functioning.

Please feel free to share some of your funny stories! (But NOT any that laugh at the pain or suffering of the patient. I do not support those at all. Only humorous things that pertain to you.)

xxx