Just How Far I've Come

I remember sitting in the meeting room of our emergency department for registrar teaching when I was a timid final-year medical student. I thought of the sandwiches that were provided each time, the presentations that were taught there and the emergency registrars that always seemed so cool and put-together. I remember how the director of ED spoke to his team of registrars, encouraging that they were the army that was the real lifeforce of this emergency.

I remember wishing that one day I could be one of them too.

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I remember the time I got to assist in stabilising a patient who had overdosed on a hundred slow-release potassium tablets. Registrars were busy giving her medications and putting in big needles into big vessels to prepare her for dialysis as per the orders of the overseeing consultant. My special job as the medical student was to fill 1L of laxatives every hour and push it through her nasogastric tube to wash out the rest of the tablets from her gut. For three hours at least, I diligently did that, syringe by syringe. It took me close to an hour to reconstitute and push 1L of fluids in through this small tube, which meant by the time my hourly task was completed, it was time to start all over again. I remembered the blisters on my hands that day from forcefully pushing the plunger of a 60mL syringe over and over.

I remember looking at the bag attached to her rectal tube after, and the crushed up tablets within them. "Look at that. You saved her life," came the encouragement from the kind consultant in charge.

I remember wishing that one day I too could carry that kind of confidence and grace into such a critical condition. 

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I remembered all these as I sat in the same meeting room a few days ago, in my scrubs after a night shift. My lanyard no longer said "medical student" and I didn't have to be as timid in this room anymore because I knew most of the people there now.

I thought of these things because now, finally, I am one of them.

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Emergency doctors get a lot of criticism from the rest of the hospital, as I've learnt a long time ago. At times that can be discouraging, but I know that there isn't a perfect specialty out there, and it pushes me to keep trying to do the best that I can. A lot of non-emergency people give me a face when I tell them that I have decided to pursue emergency medicine, and they ask me "why?".

Because I love the variety.

I love the stories I take home from work every day - the resuscitation that went on for several hours in emergency, the traumatic amputation, the foreign items in places they shouldn't be, the pus leaking profusely out a man's shoulder.

I love the different kinds of people I meet each shift - the brave wife who helped hold the mouth of her husband open while I stitched within it, the elderly woman giving me relationship advice while both her broken arms were in slings, the little boy running up and down the department because he was feeling much better after the right medication for his infection.

I love the camaraderie in ED as we tackle the list of patients waiting to be seen, and how every shift always comes to an end.

And I am so blessed where I am to love the place I work in and the people I work with too.

And on top of that, I love having more days off to live and focus on other important things in life too - family, church, friends, people, exercise, adventure.

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God, You have been so, so good to me indeed. Thank You Papa.