'Lucien' , shouts Julian from the nursing station.'Can you take a call from St de La Creme de la Crazy , the local psychiatric hospital?'
"Hello...can I help you?"
Oh...hello...its Doctor Ramphasad Haribai Spoonilal V. Mukherjee...I'm the on-call psychiatrist...we have a problem with a patient...and I was wondering if we could send her to your unit?
"Well...it depends...whats wrong with her?"
Well...you see...she's a self-harmer...and this afternoon she has stabbed herself in the abdomen...and its bleeding...and she has a lot of pain...and she's also vomited up some blood...
"Uh huh...well it sounds like she needs to go to 'Accident and Emergency' at St Vulvas' "
Well...she didn't mean to stab herself...she said it was an accident...she got a fright when her named-nurse walked into the room and tried to take the knife from her...
"I appreciate that...but if she's vomiting up blood...honestly...she needs to see a surgeon"
Yes yes...I understand...but she thinks that the nurses at St Vulvas don't like her...so we wanted to bring her to your Minor Injuries Unit instead...
(Gee...I wonder why the nurses don't like her?!)
"Well...as exciting and as intriguing an offer that is...you know...to perform an exploratory laparotomy on your patient...-and Lord knows...as a Jo'burg trained trauma nurse I'm confident
I have the skills-... but I think its actually a little above my pay grade...also...I don't think the Nursing Council would approve...you know the Poms...they just have no sense of humour..."
Oh...so you really won't see here then...its just that I don't want her to feel victimized...or to escalate her pathology...?
"Look...doctor......I'm not a psychiatrist...so I can't comment on her mental health...but I can tell you that as a South African that I have a burning desire to CT the abdomen of anyone who has firstly stabbed themselves...and secondly...IS VOMITING BLOOD!!!"
"You can't victimise a corpse!!......by the way...have you started any IV lines yet ? I think you should start two lines to be on the safe side?"
Humm...no...she is scared of needles and doesn't want any lines in her arms!
And we respect the patients' wishes you know?
"Well doctor...any resemblance between your reality and mine is purely coincidental."
Some posts are absolutely true...this one is almost verbatim ...only names have been changed to protect the guilty...thanks to Springbok Radio and The Men from the Ministry for the name!!
Unreal! Well l suppose at least the patient can leave the world happy that she was not bothered by "minor" problems like needles and nasty nurses!!!.
ReplyDeleteBOL! Man I LOVE your blog!!! I agree with you, the Poms have no sense of humour. And I've been living here for nigh on 19 years; you'd think by now I might have caught that hey. But I'm resisting - and much to their disgust - teaching my kids Afrikaans :)
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