Grace Kelly's cliff...
Mood:  caffeinated
Topic: (scary) hospital stories
Time conveniently passes by as week by week slip away. The ending of my onco-posting didn’t herald the long awaited enlightment. I gave the making of the night-duty roster out of my hands, being able to boast that none of my colleagues over the past year has done more or less than his or her fair share. But whiners will be whiners. Certain people who at one point in time had only 3 night shifts in 1 month, had to make noise… Well, whatever…My laptop crashed, with half my research inside. We managed to squeeze out the other remaining files from the hard disc though. Weeks full irritation pass by; mostly colleagues missing in action and me doing all the work, last week the 2^nd time in 10 days I had to go down all the way to gynae clinic, only to get simple material for PAP-smears, cause it seems to be impossible to have a proper stock keeping in the wards. “out of stock” seems to be the most common phrase in the centre of excellence.A few irritating sessions in the operating room with our Burmese S, who seems to have gone back to the 70’s (hearing phrases such as “hold this please, brother” makes me feel as if I’m in an Austin Powers movie, and some big black guy from the Bronx in the 70's is talking to me)… Then joining A. in surgery is a relieve, and even more so with R. Co-operation becomes co-surgery and it is a true pleasure. And all is relaxed, the chatter alternating with a wisecrack or joke. “Oops… I think there is a bit of uterus tissue left there…”… Well, I assured her, I don’t think it will grow a new uterus of its own; you don’t need to be worried.BK went to Monaco, looking for the cliff where Grace Kelly dropped off. In the meantime I looked after his pets in the private ward. Long days often are only ended with some cereal or Indomie @ most. Don’t know about my stomach lately… went to the Indian shop again the other day and had my favourite mouton curry. I always have some stomach discomfort after that dish, but now it seemed as if the sheep was trying to climb out of my stomach again…

Finally accepted !!
Mood:  celebratory
Topic: (scary) hospital stories
Geezzz... after so long dragging it around (mostly sitting on the hard disk of my laptop, waiting for some action from either BK or me the darn thing finally got accepted. After BJOG gracefully rejected my submission (even though I entertained them by being a peer reviewer for an interesting article on ECV), The Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Research (Ranking 2005: 51/57 Impact Factor: 0.685) showed sincere interest in our "penfruit" (or actually mine; I still think it's silly for him wanting to be 1st author). Anyway, not bad at all, and at all means better than the local ANZJOG....

Judgmental
Mood:  cheeky
Topic: (scary) hospital stories
Ok, here’s the deal; on a regular basis we male gynae’s have to defend our existence in the job. Especially in this local setting it is a quite common thing, whereas in most European countries it is not such a big issue perse. Although I can imagine this, I never fail to be amazed, judging the way I see most of my female colleagues go about. They are, in average, way less gentle (if not just plain rougher) than most of our male gynae staff. It is as if they are trying to make a statement such as; “Hey, if I can go through a (i.e. painful) process of labour, you might just as well cope with me now.” Come to think of it, I've heard some of them actually say that... Whereas men probably have an approach such as; “Since I don’t know what it feels like, I might just as well be extra careful and gentle”.
A nice equivalent to this matter I couldn’t withhold from you all. According to a new survey, women say they feel more comfortable undressing in front of a man than they do undressing in front of a woman. They say that women are too judgmental, where, of course, men are just grateful.
(Jay Leno)

Inside-out, upside-down
Mood:  bright
Topic: (scary) hospital stories
Was doing a caesarean the other day, and my HO asked me whether it was ok for her to remove the placenta. Sure, no prob, I said and I instructed her. Everything went smooth, I turned my attention to the cute baby and next thing I know when I look again, suddenly the uterus is inside-out… Both the HO’s as well as the gas-MO’s heart stop for a moment and my heart rate goes up as I struggle to put the darn thing back in its original position. Finally – plop – I succeed and the rest of the procedure is uneventful. I can’t help but exclaiming to the HO; “Thanx for adding flavour to my life”. Upon the disappointed look on her face I realise she must have been as anxious as me. Don’t worry, I tell her; it would probably even have happened if I took the placenta out… And see it like this; at least know we both added up on our experience…

Hospital FBI
Mood:  mischievious
Topic: (scary) hospital stories
Ever since I performed a pseudo-military coupe / putsch on the making of the night duty schedule I’ve felt as if I’m in charge of the Malaysian anti-corruption agency. Unbelievable what some colleagues will do to reduce their number of night shifts, up to paying colleagues to do their night duties in their name. When V. asked me why I gave her 8 shifts in November I told her it was because of her low cumulative, having only done 6 last month. “But I did 7 shifts last month”, she exclaimed. I bluntly said “Nope, don’t forget you pushed one of them to J.”…. The look on her face, when she realised I had found out…. No corruption; everybody the same number of calls, I told her. Takes a bloody Dutch Fluffy dude to get things straightened out in this cuckoo-place…

Mellow up....
Mood:  don't ask
Topic: (scary) hospital stories
Pfffhh... you're working on that letter again ?!! S. asks me, while she's eating the food that I tapau* for her... Yeah la, what to do... I had to mellow it up further... The thing is, my original opening for this letter in which I had to explain my absence on a meeting was " I wholeheartedly excuse myself for being - as always - on my post and doing what, unfortunately till today I'm still not being paid for, which is, my job...."
It was all just a bit too sarcastic. And especially now, cause this coming week, I'm gonna have to write the department a letter in which I need to request for money to visit the FIGO 2006 symposium in KL. You see, I submitted a poster presentation and it got accepted... And 600 US-bucks is a hefty fee to join a symposium just like that. I guess I can't piss them off first and then ask them for the money, even if they piss me off all the time...

Stop or I shoot !!
Mood:  blue
Topic: (scary) hospital stories
Dear Prof S, if you ever happen to read my silly weblog, than please know that I’m very sad and disappointed about the way I feel not being appreciated in general and you not letting me finish my sentence in particular. What I wanted to say just earlier is that brisk reflexes, just like headache (…..interrupted, telling me how foolish I am) and visual complaints are caused by cerebral oedema as part of the process of sequela that develop in pre-eclampsia. Being my usual self, I feel I needed to have that last word. If I turn out to be wrong, I’d happily be told so and also I’d be happy to hear the correct information. See, I’m willing to learn you know….

Marathon in OT
Mood:  lazy
Topic: (scary) hospital stories
I actually planned to write something down about my Sabah trip, but every time when I come home I’m so darn tired… I just told my senior I’m not putting up anymore with always taking up 1 more call per month than all the others; trying to get some income while @ the same time you’re covering for colleagues who are to lazy to do their share of night shifts, how does that work ?? Anyway, today we operated on a 6-year old with an ovarian tumour…. Everything sooo small….. only logical that all the instruments used are of baby-size as well. Only finished @ 23:15, so since studying wouldn’t happen anyway I happily joined Prof for a beer… we discussed crooked Prof E.’s professional attitude, had to evade the bar-girl hungry for kisses and having discussed one of the stalking staff nurses we concluded that sometimes “just being nice” here means something totally different than in The Netherlands, even after having evidently pointed out that you’re only being nice….

Sticky babies
Topic: (scary) hospital stories
Currently I'm in antenatal clinic...
“Doctor, I just swallowed my chewing gum”, the pregnant lady tells me when she enters the room. I smile at her and tell her; “I’m really sorry, but unfortunately I cannot replace your chewing gum. But I can assure you that the chances the gum will end up with your unborn baby are quite small… Of course, if by the time you’re about to deliver and the baby won’t come out readily, then… well then we would have to ask ourselves the question whether the baby didn’t get stuck to the piece of gum you just swallowed and for that reason alone doesn’t want to come out.”

The disappointing Hermaphrodite.
Mood:  mischievious
Topic: (scary) hospital stories
The A&E MO called me and asked me to come and take a look at a case. She starts talking about a 49-year old male, who is having menorrhagia – Excuse me, did I hear you say male ? – I interrupt her…

- Yeah, yeah, but he’s got both; he’s a ehhrr bisexual….
- You mean he has ambiguous genitals I correct her.
- Yeah exactly, cause I could also see labia and some kind of vagina and there was some yellowish discharge, and the pad he was wearing was fairly soaked, with a slightly foul smell. But I couldn’t see any active bleed…

– Go on, go on, I encourage her, for I’m suddenly damn interested…. She tells me the guy actually claims to have had a monthly bleed for the past 2 years, whereas in the past he never had any of such complaints. He turns out to be married and has 3 kids. While walking down to the A&E, I crack my mind over how after all these years he would suddenly have these periods, and never before sought for medical advice.
When I come down to the A&E, I find a Chinese male, with normal beard growth, dressed in a female model t-shirt with a V-collar and wearing a padded bra, cup size A. A pair of modest, not too conspicuous ladies shoes is on the floor besides the bed. He confirmed the information I already had and hardly added anything, since his command of Malay was as lousy as my Chinese.
I proceed to examine him and on opening the trousers I don’t see anything else than normal developed male genitals. The female Malay Medical Officer who referred the patient suddenly pops in and asks very excited; So how Dr. Ron, what are your findings ??Well, I say, while I lift up the scrotum to expose the anal region to her… I’m a bit disappointed…. Could you please point out to me where it is that you saw the labia and vagina, cause I can only see the “discharge”, referring to some minor remnants of yellowish stools. Ooohh… so that is the anus…. She exclaims spontaneously in the most naive fashion… I’m really sorry Dr. Ron, I really thought I saw labia just earlier, I hope you’re not angry with me… I give her my brightest smile, and reassure her that I’m anything but angry, since she just gave me something to laugh over for the rest of the whole weekend… and I advise her that I’m not the person she wants; it would be better to involve the PSY in this particular case…