Just what the hell is this?!

I hate introductions, I hate small talk and right now I don't like a lot of things around me, and it turns out, it's not only me!!!

 

I'm writing this blog as an attempt to put in words what I think most of us are going through at this point of our lives, in this career and in this country. If I could, I would make a drama series, maybe a play to try and explain what we go through, but this is what I have and writing about specific incidents will not sum up what I have to say.

 

Lately, I just find myself staring into the distance, just watching people around me, thinking of everything going around me, analyzing, judging, trying to find a solution, and just continuing to sit there moving forward in my downward spiral into depression, and it doesn't get better.

 

I wonder what was causing me to feel so down.  Let me try to analyze what is going on:

 

I am not going to explain who I am, what my education is or what my life experience is, because that would be bragging, a waste of lines and everybody is proud of whom they are.  My point is, we are supposed to be highly intellectual people, the cream de la cream of society, in every aspect.  But here I am finding myself extremely weak, living in a weak, corrupt and powerless society destroying and antagonizing anything good.

 

Where do I start.  Maybe it’s the sense of not knowing what I am exactly, right now.  Am I a doctor worthy of respect from my patients, colleagues, residents, senior staff, the community and people I live around and even hospital workers.  Or am I nobody, just a porter, to drive papers and patients around, with everybody bossing me around and insulting for no good reason including all the previously mentioned categories, below or above me, and no matter how hard you work or how good you are people still hurt you just to feel their power.  Or is it that I find most of the people around me in their different categories lacking discipline, endurance, perseverance, knowledge, a good way of thinking, bigger values, just full of talk about how they want to fix things and become somebody when they can’t even commit to the simplest tasks assigned to them because they feel they are too good or too big for it, full of anger and taking this out on other people and neglecting what they should be doing, and the worst being living with and for all what is wrong, shallow and useless in life.  What have we come to?

 

Is it that we have lost the sense of self achievement, that we are getting no praise from anybody, nobody notices us or what we do or are capable of, we are being downgraded all the time by everybody and our rights and freedom taken away a piece at a time.  Or is it that we have lost cause and direction.  Or maybe that we have given up on learning, improving and moving forward because of all of the above.  Maybe, it’s because we can not see the light, that person to follow, a promise or somebody willing to reach out for us and understand truly what we are going through, nobody has any more time or patience for us.   Or maybe it’s that we’ve lost the sense of beauty and are no longer grateful to what we have.

 

We live in a place where people are treated like animals, have no rights, no freedom, people live in the sewers with rats eating them alive, being bullied, killed and raped by those in power and with money, who have no values, humanity, or even intelligence.  Why have people lost respect to each other, and treat you on who you are and how much damage a person can do to another?  It’s undeniable, and it’s there, you can see it everywhere.  We are insecure in every life aspect.  The people who are supposed to protect us are not, in fact they are the one being disrespectful and being bullies.  Where do we stand?

 

I have not yet started talking about what life matters we think about such as marriage and the limited resources we are faced with and who people in other carriers are doing so much better than us in every single aspect in life and are not faced with any of the hardships we are faced with or what we have gone through or will go through.

 

People have stopped smiling and stopped saying phrases such as “no problem” or “let me see what I can do for you”, nobody wants to help any more.  Instead they try to complicate things for other people for no apparent reason than to exert power.

 

Our close family and friends have no idea what we are going through and have no interest but to express their own pain and their own point of views.  We do not matter any more and people have stopped caring about, who you really are, how they are treating you and what they are saying to you.

 

We have lost the sense of real power, the power of big personalities, empathy, resourcefulness, truth and all that is good and right.  “It is time to start working and spend less time sleeping” as a wise man once said.  It is time to restore what is right.  But the question still remains, is it possible?

 

I have learnt one or two things with time, don’t put expectations and you won’t be disappointed and live for a bigger cause, be one of the big personalities and don’t get affected by the smaller people.  It helps.

 

Maybe I am being pessimistic, and maybe I am over doing it.  But this is what we are going through.

 

Our power is not to let this affect us, only make us stronger.  We still have the power of intellect.

 

As another wise man said “Sadness is a luxury, and as long as you are still ambitious, then you are not luxurious”.  So let us raise our head high and continue walking and dealing with life with what we are and not with how we are being treated.  Let us not let ourselves be them.

Another day at El-Demerdash

It started off just like any other day at El-Demerdash hospital, by signing in at 8:15, then mingling with the guys till 8:45 and then heading to wherever the ...  we need to be.

The resident had 5 requests in store for us, the 5 interns that were only here today to get them done in 1 hour tops and go home or wherever the.... we were going or at least that's what my friend and I thought was going to happen.  Well we thought wrong.

Looking at the requests paper, my friend Islam and I decided that we were going to take the 2 patients that needed interventional radiology, thinking that it was a cool thing, that we could learn and see something new and that it wouldn't take much time.

So we took our patients down to the clinic and rushed in to get an early spot, and waited, and waited, and waited, and waited.................... and waited.

Sitting down with the other interns in the modest airconditioned waiting lounge we started chatting about all kinds of different stuff.

The first thing we discovered was that one of our patients' name was "Soso 3antar" who was incidently married to "Beblawi Ta2awi", and I promise you and I swear this is all true and the names are written as so in their IDs.  We had a good laugh about this for a good 3 hours.  We made all kinds of jokes about it.

Islam and myself decided that we should go check on our patients just to make sure that they were Ok and hanging in there.  But of course both our patients had disappeared.  As we rushed outside the patients' waiting room I found me patient and approached him:

"3am Aly enta ro7t fein"

"Ana mesh 3am Aly"

"Tab fein 3am Aly? Ra7 fein?"

"Wanna eh eli 3arafny? Ana Ma7moud, matrakez shwaya ya doctor!!!"

To my relief, 3am Aly was sitting behind me on the floor leaning on the wall witnissing this comedy show and comforting me that he was still there.

Islam's patient had gone back to her room because she decided she needed some money and that she couldn't trust her roommate with it!!

Anyway, again we had decided to go get something to drink, which took no more than 10 mins.  By the time we had reached the clinic again, my patient had finished everything and was heading back to his room.  After 3 hours of waiting, it turns out that I was not needed for more than 5 mins.

So I decided that I was not going to leave Islam alone.  We were in this together.

So we started to wait again, and he began telling me about the story of his patient who was going for a BM biopsy and just as they started touching her :

"Ana 3atshana, hatooli ashrab, 7amoot"

After drinking some water brought to her by the doctor

"Ana lessa 3atshana, hatooli ashrab tany, 7amoot"

"Tayeb ya mama ba3d man khalas, yalla"

"A3ooth Belah men al-shaitan al-rageem, Besm Allah Al-Rahman Al-Ra7eem

AAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!"

"Eh ya mama dah...... bas ehdy keda e7na lessa ma3amalnash 7aga"

"tayeb tayeb

A3ooth Belah men al-shaitan al-rageem, Besm Allah Al-Rahman Al-Ra7eem

Ketab 7ayaty ya 3en ...etc"

Back to where we were, it had hit 3 o'clock when the doctor finally called Islam's patient, and after 5 mins of examination she turned out to be just fine and didn't need anything.  After we had wasted 6 hours waiting, nothing, zilch, nil.  We had wasted 6 hours doing nothing at all.

Except that we had met "Soso 3anter" and exchanged some useless info.

Thank you Demerdash!!

Feeling it ..

It's been more than four years since i first entered the OR to attend surgeries either watch or assist , mostly they were orthopaedics. But, it wasn't until recently - the past few months - that i attend to the whole process of the surgery including anaesthesia and disinfection and draping and not just the cutting..
I think i am never afraid of going under the knife and think no one should be. I realize of course that every single step of any surgery carry the risk of complications, but, i never got to see how the patients feel. Some were positive about the process, others were really nervous and agitated and most of them recite verses from the Holy book whatever it was. One patient had the bible with her inside the OR.
Last night , i scrubbed in to assist on a hernia surgery, the patient was around 60 with a calm endearing face that i liked to look at. when the anaesthetist was ready to do her magic and told the patient she was about to proceed, he looked at me and stretched his hand towards me. I have never seen this before and have never held a patient's hand in my own , but i did it last night.
I held his hand in both my hands and smiled positively at him and felt his hand weigh down in my mine as he went to sleep.

That was a priceless feeling ..
and a priceless lesson ..
It's the little things that pass unnoticed that would make the huge difference.

The patient is well now.

I know El Demerdash might be a horrible place and patients could be ... let me pass such description, one actually told me " shokran ya asta " a couple of days ago .. but it doesn't matter whose fault it is .. True we don't have the money , but we have our human spirit which is priceless..

For all of you out there , share with us and everyone else your stories of the human-human contact warmth .
There must be some beauty some where there.

Egyptian patients!!

As people from various cultures differ in many aspects in life, they also differ in how they deal with illness and death. The Egyptian variant of patients come in a distinct and strong flavour, a mixture of comedy, ignorance, drama, misery, background and care. A mixture no physician can help but recognize. Now I am referring to the whole population of course, only the common middle to lower social class, the portion of society we are fortunate enough to deal with at El-Demerdash.

To elaborate:

Almost every patient & his/her relative come to the ER complaining of not being well for a while "howa ta3ban ba2alo shwaya", really, I truely thought you were coming to say hi and that everything is fine!

or the other obvious complaint, he is as what he appears to be "ba2alo keda zay manta shayef kam youm"!! Hold on, I have to take out my magic 8 ball and in 5 secs I promise I will figure out what's wrong!

Then you get the patients that make you feel ignorant by saying something like " ba2alha 3 ayam 3amla zay el batta el 3arga eli betrog fi el ard"

Or "meraty lamma tesees tennada3 men 7egraha 7annokah", what the ...?!

Or something like "bo2i fi barabee2 nar we 3andi 7omodey good mekhaleni 3andi fak el teneen"

Or "gozi lama beyeshrab sodya beyetkara3"

Then you get the more articulate and educated ones throwing words at you like "camula, malasma otherwise known as el dam el asfar, or mostawa el teneen fi el dam (creatinine), and finally el mastara beta3et el bool"

Then you get the more aggressive vairent of patients who spit at, swear and even sometimes hit the doctors.  Unfortunately most of the time it's not called for, or it's because of some misunderstanding between the patient and the doctor.

Just this last year, one of the patients strangled an intern with his stethoscope just because he told him that his relative has passed away.  Others have literally torn down the whole ER, damaging everything and hitting all of the doctors.

Then you get others who call you "ya ostaz, ya captin or ya bash mohandes", but last week I was called something I have never heard a doctor called before by anybody.  The patient's son called me "ya 7adret el zabet"!!

Other patients, when you are done with your job try giving you money.  The lowest I have heard of was 5 pounds and the highest I heard of was 100 pounds.  Again, last week I was offered a cigeratte as if I was a valet or a car cleaner.

It is a prestigious job, don't get me wrong!!

These examples are only part of the patients we see.  It's not all that bad.  We do get praised and thanked a lot by other patients and their families and in the right ways.  It's just the weired things we like to pick out.

If you have any other similar stories please post them

فين الكارت بتاعك ؟؟

Most of the guys at the Medicinal round probably know this story - except myself - and have already asked me that question .. For the ones who haven't and the others who don't know the story , here it is in dialogue ..

مشهد 1

الساعة حوالي الثانية بعد منتصف الليل و طبيب الإمتياز مستغرق في النوم على شبه فراش لا يبدو مريحا على الإطلاق

...
رنين الهاتف

ينهض طبيب الامتياز في عجالة ليجيب على الهاتف متوقعا كارثة




الإمتياز : الو؟

صوت رجل : الو .. 5 باطنة ؟

الإمتياز : أيوة يا فندم .. خير ؟

الرجل : إيه يا استاذ العيانة إللى انت باعتهالي مستشفى الجراحة دي ؟

الإمتياز : عيانة إيه يا فندم .. احنا مابعتناش حد الجراحة

الرجل : انت حتهزر معايا ؟ .. العيانة سعدية من 5 باطنة قدامي اهه

الإمتياز : ايوة بس انا مابعدش أي حد و ما عنديش عيانة اسمها سعدية .. فيه عيانين محجوزين عندي من واحد باطنة يمكن منهم

الرجل : نعم ؟ انت اسمك إيه ؟ نايب و لا امتياز و لا ايه بالظبط ؟

الامتياز : امتياز.. شريف احمد حضرتك

الرجل : ايوة ممضي قدامي على التذكرة اهه شريف محمد



يبدأ الفأر - ليس شعراوي - يلعب في عب الإمتياز .. نعتذر عن اللغة السوقية
لا يمضي الإمتياز بذلك الإسم قط ده إذا كان بيمضي حاجة اصلا




الرجل : ترتيبك كام ؟

الامتياز :409

الرجل : يعني ليك كارت .. فين الكارت بتاعك إزاي ما تبعتوش مع العيانة ؟

الامتياز : كارت ايه وعيانة ايه بس .. انا ما عنديش اصلا عيانة اسمها سعدية و مابعدتش حد

الرجل: انت هتهرج ؟ .. خد العيانة معاك اهه

صوت رجل لامؤاخذة : ايوة يا دكتور انا سعدية .. فين الكارت يا دكتور ؟




يدرك الإمتياز أنه كان ضحية




الامتياز : لا يا ماما .. انت الظاهر


صوت إغلاق الخط .. تيت تيت تيت تيت


و بما إن الصورة ابلغ من الكلام .. ذلك هو شعور الامتياز لحظتها





مشهد 2

الصباح التالي عند سلم المستشفى و مدام منى الكل يسأل طبيب الإمتياز ذات السؤال

فبن الكارت بتاعك يا شريف ؟

Good one guys ..
Of course , it's needless to say i still don't know who's the HO's Ashton Kutcher .. !!!!!

A trip in the Ambulance

It started out as any other night shift in the ER, only in my opinnion that the group of doctors (el-we7da) was the worst group of doctors managing the ER.  Anyway, as we sat there, a middle-aged woman (who later on turned out to be a nurse), came in with her father who was in cardiac arrest.  They statred straight away working on the old man and called for the cardiology resident to come down and take a look at the patient who had just come back from arrest.  By the time the cardio resident came down the man had gone into cardiac arrest for the second time.  Under the cardio resident's specialized hands and compitence, the old man's ticker started beating again.

Anyway, out of nowhere, they decided that the man should be transfered to Al-Hussein hospital.  Of course the man had to be transferred, through an Ambulance with 2 doctors in it.  Guess who one of the doctors was!!

Anyway, we were given our home made lunch box of epi, and atropine, and placed in one of the newer ambulances with a cardiac monitor, DC defib, a whole box of meds and 2 paramedics.

The paramedics, one was a business graduate and the other a media graduate with a 2 week crash course on how to be a paramedic and drive crazy.  I guess the only thing they took out of it was the crazy driving part.  Extremely useless people.

Anyway, the old man's heart was still ticking as we started moving.  Once we reached our hospital's gates, the monitor decided that it was not going to work any more.  Typical.  The battery was malfunctioning, although we were in one of the relatively new ambulances.

Ok, we had to go old school and use pulse and heart beat.  Just as we reached the Abbasia bridge and just as we started going up the ramp, the old man's heart stopped.  Not knowing whether this was an asystole or VF, I did what I had learned and considered this witnessed arrest a VF and started  giving pericordial thumps and meds.  I  then tried turning the monitor on, which actually worked but only gave us 5 secs of beats at a time then went off again.  Which was fine because it gave us enough time to see the VF waves, which I was very happy to see, because that meant we could still shock the man.  "Charge the defib pls" I yelled at the paramedic.  "It doesn't work sir, and it never has" was the paramedic's answer.  Fine, old school again, continue with the pericordial thumps and meds.

Now when you just think nothing else could go wrong and just as we were approaching the other side of the bridge going down, the lights insde the ambulance turned off and I could hear the sounds of the engine and car mechanics rumble slowly and fad away into a silence.

Helllllll no, that can't be happening.  But it did.  The whole donkey cart broke down actually blocking half of the road in one of the busy streets of Cairo at 11 pm.

Now, there are no lights at this moment inside the ambulance, and so they decide to open the ambulance doors for light until another ambulance comes for rescue.  So were now doing CPR practically in the middle of the street with everybody watching, and our light source was the headlights of the traffic behind us.

After about 35 mins the other ambulance finally decided to show up, equipped with absolutly nothing, except for a stretcher, the moment we stepped into the other ambulance, and I guess from frustration, the old man stopped gasping.

Now, while all of that was going on, the daughter was yelling at us, telling us that we should stop recussitating her father.  Imagining myself in one of the ER episodes I yelled back "I'm not stopping as long as your father is gasping, I'm not going to kill him" ta ta ta taaaaa.  One can only imagine.

That was not the end of it.  After me and my collegue got back to the hospital, we found the same paramedics coming in asking us to write a report to file at the police station, because the old man's family stole him from the ambulance and ran away with him before giving them a chance to go to a hospital and write a death certificate.  I had no idea what in the world that was about, but I was happy to write them the report and send them off to kill more people.

Rabena yostorha ma3ana

Humane Bathrooms !!

I know this entry might sound smelly but trust me , the reason behind it is way from smelly ..
If you're on a night shift or on any work day at El Batna Hospital and just needed a decent bathroom for whatever reason .. where would you go ? .. Don't think it's a simple question with a simple answer.
Read on the count down for the best 5 usable bathrooms in El Demerdash Batna Hospital.

Number 5

Is Actually the least could be used one .. the main Istikbal bathrooms restricted only for the Hospital Staff which makes it reasonably clean , but for some unknown reason it's been locked the past week .. Luckinly we still have more.

Number 4

It's actually one the cleanest most sanitary at the hospital , but unfortunately it's almost always locked and the keys are only with the resident .. we still couldn't make a copy of them . I'm talking about the ones in the rheumatology department .. really good but only if available . that's why it's no 4 on the list.

Number 3




Thought by most of the interns to be the best , but it only lands third on the list .. the famous bathroom in 7ogret el modarres el mosa3ed fel Istibkal .. reasonably clean and not at all smelly with a flush that actually works despite being an IV Line !!!


Number 2


Not known to most of the guys out there , but a very decent bathroom that's almost always available .. the one in the Blood Bank Of CardioThoracic surgery .. you can access it via Istikbal El Batna to the right behind a partition there ..

DrumRoll PLease .. Here comes our TOP of the list for today's guide ..
The GIT 2 Bathroom ..





Considered and in fact is one the most luxurious in El Demerdash Hospital .. recently renovated .. and used exclusively by doctors which pretty much keeps it clean at all times .. And yes ladies , there IS a mirror ..
The only obstacle is to get a way in you need a door knob which is detachable and can be easily found in the classroom right next to it ..


That was all for now ..
Keep reading for more inside Guides ..
Take Care ..