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Is this ironic, Alanis?

More accurately, it was just incredible coincidence.

I had just given a talk that Friday morning at our hospital's Continuing Medical Education programme, which is attended by any hospital staff available, including the hospital consultants and the hospital director. It went down well, I think. I put lots of pictures which I hoped would prevent anyone from falling asleep.

So I banged on for half an hour about ectopic pregnancies, about how it is the leading cause of maternal mortality in the first trimester, the various ways you can treat it and other problems that could present similarly to a ruptured ectopic, i.e. a twisted ovarian cyst.

I was having a well-earned breakfast later when A&E called, saying that they've got a possible ruptured ectopic pregnancy. Ah, dammit. I swallowed the rest of my Pepsi (yes, I know, a carbonated sugary drink for breakfast, bad girl, bad girl) and made my way to emergency.

There was a lady writhing with pain, holding on to her left side. The lady says she hasn't had a period for three months and a urine test confirms she is pregnant. Her abdomen is tender and I think, uh, rupture.

Here is our RM20,000 scan machine which nicely shows a 12 week old baby spinning around in her uterus. Uh, not an ectopic then. Oh, but here is a huge ovarian cyst on her left side. Oh yes and come to think of it, the fact that she was writhing on the bed rather than lying still with the pain should have pointed out to me that her problem wasn't an intra-abdominal bleed.

Anyways, everyone made jokes about how funny it was that I was talking about twisted ovarian cysts this morning and now I've got a patient with one, and I went 'Ha ha ha' and carted off the lady to the operating theatre.

I was barely out of theatre when that dastardly Emergency Department called again. What do you think it was about? Yes, a ruptured ectopic pregnancy, no shit.

So, it was a pretty hectic day what with nothing going right in the labour room. I missed lunch and dinner and ended up with bad gastritis. I was in theatre again that night and was feeling really bloated and gassy. So much so, that I did not stop farting. It's not the kind that you can stop, it just pops out. Really, it was quite embarrassing.

Some doctor dude was once worried about farting in the sterile environment of the operating theatre. Would it compromise patient care and lead to higher rates of infection? So he did a little experiment. He farted directly on to an agar petri dish, then farted again through his trousers onto a different petri dish. The result: a small amount of bacteria grew on the first dish, but none on the second.

I think that was a nice symmetry to the day. I started out being all solemn and scholarly at my presentation and 18 hours later I'm thinking of farts on a petri dish. And the anesthetist was talking about his balls.

Mmmmmm, so nice to get some sleep.

Comments

Maryam said…
the farts on a petri dish experiment is one giant leap for science and mankind.

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