Oprah has a theory that LUCK does not exist. There’s only preparation meeting oppurtunity. I do wish I could be prepared for anything! All our lives we spend busy preparing in one way or another. We spend 9months intrauterine preparing to make our passage through the vaginal canal and take the first breath of air into our lungs. We spend 12 years of our lives in school preparing for working lfe or to be able to further our studies. We spend our working lives preparing for retirement. And those are just the big things. There are so many other little and big occassions that we prepare for. But can we ever really be fully prepared?
My answer would be no! No, we can’t be prepared for anything. I spent five years in medical school and when I started work on 2 January 2006, I DEFINITELY did not feel prepared. Besides the fact that I had no idea where to start when the sister called me to the ward to tell me that the old lady who had suffered an acute myocardial infarct (heart attack) had a blood pressure of 200/120 (normal is around 120/80), there are so many other things that university cannot possibly prepare you for. I wasn’t prepared for friends calling me to ask me my medical opinion, I couldn’t very well tell them that I knew F*** all after med school. I wasn’t prepared for telling people they were dying and there wasn’t anything more I or any other doctor could do for them. I wasn’t prepared to deal with patients’ family. I hate dealing with the family. I avoid the wards like the plague during visiting hours! I hate answering the phone when family call. I don’t know how to reconcile their emotinal view of the situation with my cold medical views.
The worst I ever felt was when a 90-something year old granny’s family called me and asked me to give her a hug from them! Now it doesn’t matter the situation, I DON’T hug patients! I may smile, when I do I feel as though I given a lot of myself. Now this particular 90 something year old grandmother was in a coma. She had fallen and bumped her head and never woken up. The options, in this scenario, are zero. She probably has some sort of intracranial bleed and at that age the prognosis is very poor. She would not be fit to undergo any sort of surgery and should she undergo any sort of surgery she probably still wouldn’t be able to wake up. So she lay in the ward for a few days, and we were basically waiting for her to die. But everyday the family would call asking how she was. Now I thought that I was very kind, telling them each time that her condition was unfortunately unchanged in a very kind tone of voice; when what I really wanted to tell them was that there was no hope of her ever recovering and they should start making funeral arrangements. The cherry on the top was when they asked me to please go and give her a hug!! I think I broke out in a cold sweat, but didn’t miss a beat and told them that OF COURSE I would, it was no problem. All the while I was thinking, how the hell am I going to go and give that body a hug?!!
I finished off the paper work that is an unavoidable part of an intern’s day, I took some bloods, I made a few phonecalls and then I sat and wondered about what else I needed to do in the ward. Anything but go and give the hug I had promised to give. I must confess, that I did not hug the old lady/body. I eventually walked to her bed, put my hand on her shoulder and said: Tannie, your family sends their love. And I squeezed her shoulder slightly. I felt indescribably stupid the whole time! I have no hard evidence that people in comas continue to be conscious of their surroundings. As far as I was concerned her GCS was 3, that meant she was NOT conscious! Nothing in university prepared me for hugging comatose patients. Nor can I tell a patient with breast cancer how many months she has left to live.
