Place: Oldham Hospital
Event: The Death
It was during handover in a busy ward. I was on an early shift and the nurse taking over from the night staff walked around the ward getting ready for a busy start. She soon came back out of the ward and said very calmly, "Did you know that bed 6 was dead?" In reply, "No." Though by the look of him he had been dead a fair few hours!
Place: Theatres
Event: Cancerous colon
I followed a lady to theatre who was having a suspicious lump removed from her bowels. It was a truly amazing experience, sugeons are alwyas keen to show off their slicing skills. I even got the chance to feel the cancer before he cut it out of her. What really surpirsed me was the lack of neatness on putting the intestines back into her body. The surgeons laid them out on the table, snipped off the bad bit and stitched it up, then stuffed them back inside (literally stuffed them). I commented something like, "er, dont they like, get all squished up and twisted?" (a few smiles and sniggers followed and i learned that apparently they don't! But that wasn't the whole story. Just before the conultant started sowing the lady back up, he decided to just quickly check the ovaries because the cancer may have spread to this area. On shoving his hand inside her and digging about for a bit he let out an "oh no!" He then lifted out a tennis ball sized hard lump from her ovary which he cut away and declared that the cancer had indeed spread and it was a good job he'd decided to check before sowing her back up! Phew!
No comments:
Post a Comment