Take Two at Voluntering!

Today is my 2nd day as a volunteer at the Penang Adventist Hosp (PAH). Let's juz say it was one hell of a trip! Damn interesting and quite educational too!! (Pls excuse my language..hehe.)

Guess which department I was sent to dis time? The Emergency Room a.k.a. ER!!! Cool, isn't it? My frenz were given diff departments---> Yokekei got Pharmacy (morning) & Surgical 2 (afternoon), Lydia got Physiotherapy, Chiahui got Surgical 2 and Chiapei got to follow 1 of da doctors around (Lucky her, coz her mum knew the doc personally..) My dad knew one of da cardiologists but he said I wouldn't be able to help or learn much following him around . And he was right.

Today, I learnt quite a lot of stuff. Mostly the things I had to do was routine--wheeling patients to the X-ray room (whoa, some were quite heavy!), sent samples to their respective places and help around the nurses.

At first, I took a look around da ER and the equipment there was quite fancy and high-tech! Wow! I also took note of how they kept their medicines. Some were juz kept on normal cabinets, while some were kept in da refrigerators and a few were kept in locked drawers coz those are controlled drugs (eg. Morphine, heroin..)

At the ER, I oso got to interact with patients. There was a lady who was an uncontrolled diabetic and oso blind, there were all these wounds on her limbs.. Didya know dat any wounds on a diabetic are very diff to heal? I think it's due to the high blood sugar conc. or sumthing.

But da most interesting case was dis elderly man with high fever. (Ppl with high fever tend to become confused and boy, was he confused!) When the nurse wanted to take his body temp. with dis ear equipment thingy, he was struggling to get free, insisting it was painful when the nurse had assured us that it was a painless procedure. So, I have to help to hold him still. Then, the nurse had to take his blood sample. Fearing that he'd fight us, she had to call in an attendant to help us. So wif 2 ppl (me and the attendant) holding him, she tried her best to take his blood wif his flailing around, struggling to break free--which he can't coz she had tied him to the bed with a piece of cloth that was attached to his bed sheet.

However, at the end, she accidentally knocked over an empty test tube, which cause her having to ask for a new one. During dat time, the poor old man's blood was still dripping away, non-stop!!! Onto da bed trail, onto the floor!! In splotches of bright red blood! (And I didn't faint! Thk God! That'd have been wayyy embarassing!! I guess I gave myself less credit for how "tough" I am..lol..) I guess I saw RED, not figurately, but more like literally.. lol. Finally, the blood-taking procedure was over and she left a *braunula sticking in his arm.

Then she gave him an antibiotic injection thru the braunula, instructing me dat the injection must be given slowly, to avoid bulging building up in his veins. Ooo, interesting, rite? Pretty educational lo.. (PS: I oso got to darn up surgical gloves--powdered, to avoid them sticking to hands--Isn't it SO COOL? It felt so great! It was stained with blood and dirt after dis case. She instructed to throw all bloody stuff into the red bin and general waste into blue bin.. *Colour coding*)

An earlier encounter in da morning was a man whom was very possibly infected with the HIV virus. Me and my fren weren't allowed in coz they dun wan to expose us unnecessarily to it. If he had open wounds (which he definitely had, I think) and we also had open wounds, then we might get infected too… # Scary #

I guess dat's all for now... This is getting pretty long liao... If I think of sumthing new, I will share it in a new post lo... Ciao!

* Braunula is a device stuck into a patient's vein and kept there so if there are any further injections needed, it can be done thru the braunula without poking more holes into the patient...