Saturday, October 17, 2009

The Secret Garden of working over time and emergency patients




The date was October 15th 2009, the time was 4:00pm, location: acupuncture clinic.
When I took this job I never thought that I would be stuck after hours with an emergency patient, squeezing puss and tissues out of a patient's stomach for 3 hours.

Patient comes in at 4:00pm, sits down in the waiting area and leaves to the bathroom then I hear a desperate yelling coming from the bathroom. I bring in the doctor to the bathroom and when she got there, there was puss everywhere, on the floor, the door handle, the trashcan, just everywhere. He suffered from a long term disease which imitated colitis, which is a inflammation of the colon that causes diarrhea, abdominal pain, painful bowl movements, etc..
His lower stomach was hard, he looked about 6 feet and weighed less than 110 lbs, so he had a very thin frame but with a rock solid lower stomach that stuck out like a pregnant woman's belly.

No one knew what it was, his doctors has given up and concluded that he might not be able to make it. So eventually he came to our clinic looking for help, he took our herbal medicine and the inflammation started to worsen. We found out that the thing that was in his stomach was years and years of puss that has built up by the bacterias that was living in his body. The puss eventually became solid and expanded, so the herbal medicine liquefied it and the skin was no longer able to hold it; so it exploded.

We spent 4 hours tending to the patient and placing tissues under him so the puss can flow out, we didn't even squeeze it most of the time and it came out. The most painful part was when a tissue or the root of the problem; the bacteria chunks were exposed and the acupuncture doctor had to pull it out of his 6 mm diameter hole in his stomach. It was definitely disturbing, the smell lingered around the clinic until the next day, half a gallon of Clorox did the trick I must say. So we spent from 4 in the afternoon til 7 in the evening and I stayed until 8pm sanitizing and cleaning.


<--Yes, that is a picture of me taking a 2 minute break, the picture was taken by my boyfriend who waited 4 hours to take me home. Thanks babe. I took pictures of the whole mess but I wont post it because it might traumatize the readers. At the end of the day I was exhausted, I had a paper to write and when I got home after a short dinner it was already 10pm. That's when the tears came, having two jobs going to school full time and this was just the cherry on top. Anyone who is going to school and working will feel my pain. There is that point in our lives where our everyday routine becomes too much and we need a break, but what happens when the break doesn't come?

The lives we live are not picture perfect but bitching about it wont do us any good either. I learned to accept the situations as they come and if there is something that we can do about it to make it better, I should do it. But if there is no way out and we need to wait until things become smoother then we should. For a year now I've been complaining about how I am sacrificing so much for my family and nothing made me feel better until I realized it'll get better later. That doesn't mean I'm going to wait here like a fool for my "moment". No. It means if there is a way out but it's not due to be here until next year; I'll plan and set it to action when the time is due instead of forcing them to happen now.

Patience.. I'm learning it. Day by day.