Acute respiratory distress

Being in medical line can make you really lose your sense of compassion and sympathy towards others.

Especially when you are in posted in medical ward.

Sometimes we even get irritated with patients. what more if the patients are those who would not comply with the treatment and medications given. And they persistently ask to go to back home as soon as possible.

What more when those are the people who keep being admitted to the ward because of the same problems...

Currently there are a lot of chaos regarding the H1N1 thingy..or ILI or SARI..

There are a lot of changes in the ward because of the event.

The ward which was previously saved for the dengue patients are now being filled up with patients suspected of respiratory problems

throughout my oncalls-- there have been quite a number of suspected cases

the things is..it's sort of cumbersome to actually have to don the spacesuit...

and the N95 mask...it's really hard to breathe in those stuff..

and then you have to do the throat swab..and the notification..

but the thing is..respiratory distress is a very life threatening event..and a very acute one , that is.

one of my patient had collapsed this morning just before the morning rounds. She had aspirated earlier after taking her breakfast.

Thus we had proceeded with Intubation in which i had failed for the first time. due to the difficult intubation, we had referred to anaest.

during the procedure, the pulse had become absent and quickly we commenced to CPR. alhamdulillah, she had revived and proceeded with bagging until further admission to ICU.

What a day to start with..

Then..in the afternoon, another unstable patient arrived. It was a life threatening asthma.. it had also threatened the staff as well,mind you..

She became unstable, and had progressed quickly to distress.

She was then electively intubated due to her worsening condition...

What a day...what a day...