Sunday, April 5, 2009

The Mental Consultant

No he was not a psychiatric consultant. The man is just crazy.

He showed up when I was in the middle of ten other things and demanding that I attend his ward round one morning.

He had 8 patients on my ward and when we got to patient number 3 I heard the strangest clicking sound coming from across the ward. I looked over to see where the sound was coming from.

I saw a 30 something known epileptic patient having a massive seizure. If you have never seen something like this it is indeed scary. I have seen many and still find it tough. It has been awhile and I felt very scared and less than confident.

The clanking sound I heard was his teeth hitting the siderail as he was seizing. He also looked a bit blue.

His RN was all the way down the other end of the ward on the phone with abusive demanding relatives. There were 2 of us for 28 patients that day. I knew all about my 14 and the other RN had his 14 that I barely knew. I dropped the ward round consultant like a hot potato and ran over to the seizing patient. I was yelling for the HCA to grab this patients nurse as I needed 02 and some diazepam.

It was a long and violent seizure and he looked cyanosed. As I was trying to get him into a decent recovery position and get 02 set up the ward consultant comes running over throwing notes across the room and screams at me:

"How very dare you walk away from my ward round!!"

The patient was still seizing at this point. But it wasn't this particular consultants patient so I don't think he cared.

I just carried on with what I was doing. The consultant walked off in a rage. There was a little 96 year old lady who was walking by with a zimmer frame on her way to the toilet. She witnessed the whole thing and she is as sharp as a knife. As the consultant walked away she looked at him in disgust and said "what a twat, the god damned bastard".

Maybe you had to be there but her comment had me in stitches for the rest of the day. I am still laughing because she was so cute. I love old people.

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