Pethidine Pleasure

Sorry to have inflicted the story of my illness on you the last post. What can I say? I'm male - I become very pathetic when I'm sick.

There's just a small corollary to this illness. When I went to the GP, she said that she couldn't see my eardrums because they were so full of wax! How embarrassing! When I saw patients in GP land with this problem, I usually suggest either buying some waxsol or using some olive oil. Now, since I'm sick at home and not really keen to go out shopping, I thought I'd try the second option! And why not? You're supposed to practise what you preach right!?

Now, I spent the morning thinking long and hard about how I was going to do this. It's important to get these kind of procedures right! Preparation is the key. Firstly, I thought of the most direct route which was pouring the oil directly into my ears, but that obviously had the potential to go horribly wrong. The next idea involved searching the house for a little pipette. Unfortunately I wasn't sure if we had one. Finally, I decided to keep it simple and just use a small teaspoon.

Round 1. I put a couple of drops on the teaspoon and put it in my right ear. Ooooo! It feels funny when it runs into your ear canal. I sit down with my head tilted for a few minutes and then repeated on the other side. My ears were just a little bit oily but everything seemed fine. Too fine. Had I put in enough? Perhaps there's so much wax in there that it would just soak up the oil and turn into goo!?!? Maybe I should try putting some more in.

Round 2. This time, I put more oil onto the teaspoon. I started with the left ear this time. I relived the feeling of it running into my ear. Then with my head still tilted to the right, I move into the living room, lie on my side on the couch and watch TV for about 15 minutes. Surely it must have soaked in by now. Now it's the right ear's turn! Same drill. Tilt the head to the left, pour it in and back to the couch!

Then after a few minutes, I realise I have a problem - the oil in my left ear coming back out! Ooops! So I grab a tissue and try to soak it up. I can't hear a thing because the tissue is covering my left ear, and oil is completely blocking the right ear. By now, Dad's looking at me a little funny but he doesn't really say anything. A few minutes later, my left hand is soaked with oil, so I decide to sit upright again. Then the right ear starts leaking oil too! MY EARS ARE LEAKING OIL!!! Do you have any idea how strange the experience of your ears leaking oil can be?? Let me assure you right now that it's quite bizarre.

So there I am, sitting with oil coming out of my ears, I can't hear anything, and nothing appears to be helping in the wax department either! I even tipped my head to the side and tried tapping lightly to get some to move. No luck. :(

Oh well, I'm going to try and wash my ears now. They're quite oily now. I wonder what it looks like inside now.....

It all started harmlessly enough. Just felt a bit more tired than normal on a Sunday night. I woke up on Monday morning feeling a bit achy in the legs, but it's nothing a couple of panadol can't handle. Breakfast isn't as appetising as normal, but that happens sometimes. I proceed to attend the first day of the ACLS course. I'm really enjoying it, but as the morning progresses, something doesn't quite seem right. The panadol has worn off much faster than expected. The aches in my legs are starting to spread to the rest of my body. I'm tired as though it's 11pm already, but I check the clock and it's only 9am.

Lunch time can't come around fast enough. The aches are getting worse. It is a frosty day, but the quick trip across to the caf causes quite an unpleasant feeling. I'm positively shivering when I get there. I'm so cold that I buy a slightly unusual combination for lunch - hot pie and pumpkin soup. It certainly warmed the soul a little, but it didn't help the aching that had now well and truly set in. I tried to sit quietly for the remainder of my lunch break but GeekBoy next to me refuses to shut up. I started to get a headache too.

The remainder of the afternoon was an uphill battle. Every movement required so much effort. When we moved to a different room, the temperature would change too and I would start to shiver whether I was hot or cold. In fact, I couldn't tell if I was hot or cold at all. I don't know why I didn't just go home, rather than wait for the 5pm finish.

That night, the rot really set in. Fever, headache, and muscle aches from head to toe. I'm so tired. I can't move at all. The only way to avoid the pain is to sleep. I cannot take enough panadol to keep up with the symptoms without killing my liver at the same time. My hopes of completing the ACLS course, and the start of my O&G attachment have to be postponed.

By Tuesday night, the sore throat started. At first it was insignificant compared to the pains in the rest of my body. However by the next morning, I thought I had swallowed a cactus. Not any normal cactus, but one of those really nasty ones that Wile E. Cyote would use to try and catch his Road Runner. Swallowing became so painful that it was almost impossible. My appetite disappears. Along with the continuing fever, headache and myalgia.

By Thursday, I'm sick of it all. I make the decision to see a doctor. When I ring Pink Cottage, I find that they're all booked for the day and their next appointment is tomorrow. I might be dead by tomorrow!! So I decide to call Mum's GP and I find that because I'm not registered with them, it will cost me $57!!!! After coercion from Mum and V D, I still attend. The GP is very nice and tells me what I half expected to hear anyway. "It's probably just viral". She was good enough to take a throat swab anyway to make sure it wasn't strep throat.

That night, I slept for over 12 hours. On Friday morning, I wake up with no voice at all. It's totally disappeared. I also discover that I've developed a productive cough. My Mum, who has been fantastic by keeping me alive with regular hot drinks, gets me some neurofen and throat lozenges. They make a huge difference, and finally with the combination of neurofen and panadol the pain starts to feel more managable. Unfortunately, the neurofen is also not so kind on the stomach, particularly because I've had almost no food since Monday, I started to feel more nauseous.

It's the weekend again, and I'm still alive, but only just. Fever, headache, myalgia, sore throat, productive cough, with sore ribs and abdo muslces from coughing. When will this all end!?!? At least the Crusaders winning their semifinal provided a little relief from my grim outlook on the world.

Sunday morning again. Day 7 of my illness. To my surprise, I wake up feeling a little more human. It still hurts like crazy to cough, and I still can't talk, but at least I don't need panadol to survivie. The other pain symptoms and fever had settled. Perhaps there is a chance of recovery. Still unable to start O&G tomorrow though. I think I'll need another day at home at least.

I know when I've enjoyed a rotation when I'm sad to leave. The last seven weeks has been so amazing. In 4th yr I hated general medicine, but this year I've learnt more that I could have possibly imagined. I had an awesome team with a House Officer who worked me like a slave, and a registrar who was a walking encyclopedia! I also had a great no-nonsense consultant who had this amazing ability to focus on the useful information and ignore all of the crap that just confuses matters. We also had fantastic patients with such a wide range of interesting problems! I couldn't have asked for more.

I'm not sad about having done my long case though. I sounded like a bumbling fool throughout the my presentation to the examiners. It got off to a bad start - I realised I had forgotten to ask the patient her age! Then I had forgotten to write down all of her medications! As I kept talking, I could see the examiners change from looking bored to confused to dismayed to irritated. With each morphological change in their facial expressions, I got more and more nervous which made things even worse. Finally I got to the end and had a chance to shut up.

Then it was question time! Of course, I handled these with true professionalism.

Them: "How is a bone scan done?"

My brain: "I fill out a yellow referral form and ask for a bone scan, and it just happens"

What I said: "I dunno"

Later on...

Them: "What dose of morphine would you give?"

My brain: "As per IV protocol"

What I said: "I dunno"

That's just a brief glimpse of my stupidity. Oh well, it's all over now and there's nothing I can do to change the crazy things I said.... or didn't say.

Anyway, there's more exciting things to think about! I'm now exactly half way through TI year! Half way towards becoming a House Officer. Hence, you can call me House while I earn the Officer part over the next 6 months! (OK, sad joke I know) All of the big rotations are over now. There's just O&G, paeds and my elective to go! Going to out of town for O&G is a bit of a nuisance, but I'll make the most of it and try to enjoy having a rotation outside of Auckland.

Of course, the most exciting thing coming up is my elective!! I've finally managed to get my plane tickets sorted. My hands were shaking with excitement this morning when I signed the forms at the travel agents! I'll talk more about this in another post!

Whoops! I've kinda slipped a bit with posting! Been super flatout the last couple of weeks. Mainly because I accidently found myself admitting patients over last weekend. Admitting in itself isn't too bad, but it means having to go into hospital for 12 consecutive days which is quite tiring!! I was extremely tired this week and I kept switching off. My consultant must have noticed because he suggested that the TI should do a brain biopsy on one of our patients. I actually heard the comment but it didn't even register to me that it was a slightly unusual suggestion!!!

The stress was exacerbated by the stupid case history that was due in on Friday!! The stupid word limit meant I ended up deleting more than I was writing! ARGH so stupid.

I've also had to practise presenting long cases which is quite a stress in itself. It's really hard to find appropriate patients. When you have one and see if you can talk to them, either they are eating, sleeping, having family visit, or simply don't want to do it.

Also, 45 minutes to talk to a patient and examine him/her is actually a very short length of time. You have to cut corners but then it puts you at risk of missing something really important!

Next, it's amazing how stupid you feel while presenting to a registrar or consultant. Even when you think you have all of your bases covered, someone can come along and rip you to shreads from a totally different angle which you never expected!!! It's kinda like having a komodo dragon bite into your spleen while a neurologist tests both plantar reflexs at the same time... or so I would imagine. Gosh, it's so depressing to think about how little I know. There's so much study ahead of me it's not even remotely funny.

Even more depressing - I have to wake up at 6.20am tomorrow... AGAIN!!