Sunday, December 25, 2011
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Monday, October 3, 2011
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Friday, July 1, 2011
Friday, June 24, 2011
Monday, June 13, 2011
Monday, June 6, 2011
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Monday, May 23, 2011
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Saturday, April 23, 2011
My horrific clinic life as a student nurse
Cleaning the doctor’s office, making breakfast, cleaning the restrooms, cleaning the patients’ rooms, helping the doctor, making lunch, helping the doctor, cleaning the doctor’s room, being yelled at all day long…and I was so exhausted.
When we were cleaning the doctor’s room, Okusama came into the office holding her dog.
She was talking about something with the doctor, and it appeared that the doctor was going to go out that night.
Okusama and the doctor left for their house which was just next to the office (I’ve never seen their entire living space) and we finished our cleaning so we went back to our room.
Finally, I could sit down.
I asked Senpai 1, “Senpai? Today a small injured boy came in, didn’t he? He was given anesthesia but why was he crying so hard like that?”
Senpai 1 turned to me and said, “Well, the doctor tells us that the anesthesia is working, but if he started to stitch the boy up so soon, I don’t think the anesthesia had started working yet. That was why he was crying so hard. It was painful.”
I said, “Then it is a terribly pity, isn’t it? I felt the pain with him, too. Senpai, were you okay?”
She replied, ”I’ve gotten used to it because it wasn’t me who was getting the stiches. You have to get used to it, too.”
I didn’t think so. I really didn’t think so. Anyway…
All the other nurses started to gather in our room.
The head nurse said, “I wonder how late it will be tonight.”
The other older nurse said, “I hope it won’t be too late.”
I asked them, “Excuse me, but what are you all talking about?”
The head nurse said, “We are talking about the doctor. He went out for drink, you know. He often does that and then comes home after midnight. Till then we can’t take a bath.”
I said, “But we used the bathroom last night..do you mean that it’s not only for our use?”
The head nurse said,” No, the bathroom is shared with them. That was their bathroom and the doctor uses it first then his wife. We take turns after that and whoever is last needs to clean it.”
No way!!!!!!
The head nurse added, “Besides we have to check all the patients at 9:00 pm. Two nurses spread out to the east and west sides of the building and then check each room.”
I asked, “What? Does that mean we have to check the rooms alone?”
She said, “Right.”
Scary! I didn’t want to walk around the patients’ floors by myself in the dark. It was too scary. Even though there was more than one nurse on the other side of the building, the patients’ building was connected with some kind of ghost stories. The light was off and it was really dark. What should I do? Oh, what should I do?
But here in the hospital, your requests never go through. You have to do what you have to do…no matter what.
And it appeared that any seemingly reasonable request made in this place would be twisted into a personal, selfish favor, and the Okusama would have a long conversation with you.
And when Okusama gets angry, somehow her neck becomes really red. And her face is like a giant snake. You could easily imagine her swallowing you from head to toe.
When checking the patients’ rooms, I learned that we needed to check to see if the patients were comfortably sleeping or not and check if any of the patients’ conditions had changed for the worse.
But usually all of the patients slept during the daylight hours so most of them were wide awake at night.
They would be waiting for nurses to come visit so that they could have a chat with us.
But the nurses were not allowed to chat with for too long so the patients needed to create imaginative reasons to keep the nurses longer. Their back hurt or their leg was sore or their head suddenly began pounding.
Even if we started to check them from 9:00pm, we would usually finish around 10:30pm or when it was later, the clock would read 11:00pm.
The time the doctor returned that night was a little after midnight.
I was sitting in a chair asleep.
Senpai 1 shook me to wake me up and we went to the bathroom for our turn to take baths and prepare for bed. On that night, we were the last ones, but Senpai 1 advised me that “When you have someone after you, you shouldn’t soak in the bathtub because the water gets dirty. All right?” Even on the coldest winter night, we couldn’t soak in the hot water.
It was after 1 o’clock in the morning, and after 4 hours and 45 minutes, I was going to have to get up again…but before that thought registered in my mind, I was fast asleep.
To be continued…
Thursday, April 14, 2011
MR.BIG / THE WORLD IS ON THE WAY
- 4月7日(木) 大阪城ホール(Osaka Castle Hall)
- Undertow
- American Beauty
- Daddy, Brother, Lover, Little Boy
- Green-Tinted Sixties Mind
- Take Cover
- I Won't Get in My Way
- Stranger in My Life
- Once Upon a Time
- A Little Too Loose
- Road to Ruin
- Still Ain't Enough for Me
- Just Take My Heart
- Merciless
- I Get the Feeling
- Where Do I Fit In?
- The World On the Way
- Voodoo Kiss
- Carry On
- Around the World
- All the Way Up
- As Far as I Can See
- Addicted to That Rush - - - - - - - - encore 1 - - - - - - - -
- To Be With You
- Colorado Bulldog - - - - - - - - encore 2 - - - - - - - -
- 30 Days in the Hole
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
世界一運が悪い男 - QI Series 8 -
I can't believe these men! I heard that BBC apologized, but it isnot enough!
Saturday, March 5, 2011
My horrific clinic life as a student nurse
One of the many patients at the clinic was a woman who had just returned from South Korea and had bitten by a dog.
The inside of her right thigh had turned a deep purple, and the doctor was telling her that she was infected from something the dog carried and he would have to cut that part of her leg open to remove the infected area.
Fortunately I was only required to watch this time.
The doctor gave her a local anesthetic and began to cut through the skin with a scalpel.
I could hear the poor woman groan in a small voice, “Ooooooooouch!”
“Oh, no, I feel the pain, too,” I thought.
My heart started to beat fast again. I really wanted to faint so I wouldn’t have to see any blood anymore, but somehow I was very conscious.
The woman told the doctor that she was feeling pain, but the doctor said, “What do you think I am doing? Of course it hurts. Or do you want me to leave your leg open without any stitches?” He was even smiling a little at that. I guess he was trying to be humorous for her, but it didn’t strike me as funny at all. He sewed the wound together very quickly and told her to come back again the next day.
Senpai-1 told me to wash the syringe in the sink and place it on the plate next to the sink so that she could sterilize it later.
I looked into the sink.
There was a syringe with some yellow liquid in it lying on the sink.
The yellow liquid was the recent patient’s pus. “Is it safe to touch it?” I wondered, but I had no other options so I touched it.
I turned the faucet and the water started running. Then pulling out the plunger, I tried to remove the needle from the hypodermic.
“Ouch!” The needle pricked the index finger of my left hand. Why did everything have to go so wrong all day!
I felt a chill run up my back and wondered if I was going to die from some sort of disease. But I couldn’t tell about it to anyone there. If I mentioned it to anyone, the consequences would have been detrimental so I took a risk. I was very scared, but all I could do was just wash. So my hands worked hard under the water to sterilize them as best as possible. They probably ended up cleaner than the tidely more than I washed the syringe.
The next patient was a woman who had broken her leg between her knee and ankle.
I was still worried about my finger, but I had to work.
The doctor told me to hold her leg so that he could wrap it with a bandage soaked with gypsum.
I have never thought that one leg could be that heavy, but it was really heavy.
I held it very tightly and tried not to drop it. All of my mind was focused on my arms.
Then, suddenly, the doctor stopped rolling the bandage and turned back to look at me.
With a loud voice, he asked, “Do you want your hands wrapped together with this bandage on her leg?”
I was very embarrassed because he yelled at me right in front of the woman.
She was nice and gave me a kind look, but the doctor was different. I thought, “Couldn’t he just have me what to do instead of yelling and speaking so cynically?”
But he was the boss. I was nothing to him. Smaller than a speck of dust floating in that room.
I was now very pale, sweaty, worried, and hurt inside and out.
It was after 6 o’clock in the evening and finally the doctor’s examination was over. But my day was far from over. I was so tired, but Senpai-1 told me we had to clean the office.
My long day was still stretching before me.
To be continued…
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
My horrific clinic life as a student nurse
The doctor wasn’t in his office when I got there. There were already many people sitting in the waiting room.
Soon the doctor came into the office. The bottom of his white gown streamed behind him with his pace.
He saw me and said, “Hey, you. I know you haven’t gotten used to being here yet, but hang in there, ok?”
I said, “I’ll do my best, doctor,” and I thought maybe this doctor can be kind and I was a little relieved.
But (of course) that was just another big mistake of mine and it didn’t take so long to realize that everyone in the office was so tense because of him.
I thought I just needed to observe what the other nurses were doing and learn from them…well, at least that was what I thought at first, but no one seemed to care if it was my very first day or not. I was very nervous.
The fist visitor was a three-year-old boy who was with his mother. She explained that he had fallen down and hit his forehead. There was a cut from a stone or something.
The wound was about 2 centimeters and already covered with a scab.
The doctor said to a nurse, “Tweezers.” The nurse brought a pair of tweezers which were about 15 centimeters long.
It happened in a second. I wanted to faint, but I was very awake.
The doctor placed the tweezers on the scab and then opened the boy’s wound. Fresh blood began to pour out.
Of course the boy was crying like he was fire and tried to move his head away from the doctor and his tweezers.
The doctor told the boy’s mother to hold the boy’s head tightly and he began to wash the wound with saline water, I think.
I really wanted to escape from the office. The boy received 100% of my sympathy. He was crying so hard that he almost threw up. Oh, God, please let me get out of this room, I prayed.
But of course there was no way that I could hide somewhere else so I just stood up there pretending I wasn’t even there.
Then the doctor told the mother to lay the boy down on the treatment bed.
I had no idea that the real frightening part was about to begin.
The doctor told me to hold the boy’s legs. I thought, ”Me? You want me to hold the boy’s legs? I don’t think I can.” For a moment, I couldn’t move.
Then the doctor yelled at me, “What are you deaf? I told you to hold his legs. Do as I said!”
Now my fright turned to real fear.
I timidly held the boy’s legs, but to the boy, this situation must have seem like a dividing line as to whether he would live or die.
So he kept kicking me so that he could escape from the bed.
I added more power on his legs, holding them with my hands with all of my weight behind them.
The doctor injected a local anesthesia into the wound and the boy now really started screaming with gallons of tears. (I still get goosebumps imagining it.)
Then the doctor picked a circular needle attached to a string and stuck the needle into the wound.
My heart had never beated that fast before and I was apologizing to the boy many times in my head.
It wasn’t me who was giving him such pain, but I felt so guilty.
The treatment was finally done and I felt like I would faint immediately.
But the next patient was already sitting in front of the doctor’s chair waiting to talk to him.
My long day wouldn’t end so easily, I thought.
To be continued…
Rock'nRoll & A Country Girl: My horrific clinic life as a student nurse
Rock'nRoll & A Country Girl: My horrific clinic life as a student nurse: "From 2008 to 2009, I experienced an illness and attended a surgical hospital for about three months. One day, while I was waiting in t..."
Monday, February 28, 2011
My horrific clinic life as a student nurse
After cleaning the restrooms, the next job among the endless daily routine was cleaning the patients’ rooms.
Cleaning one after another after another.
While I was sweeping one of the rooms, one of the patients, who seemed to be in her late 70’s, offered me a Japanese snack called “Manju.”
“Manju” is a traditional Japanese snack introduced to Japan in 1338~1342 from China. Basically, some azuki (small, reddish, brown beans boiled and kneaded with some added sugar) is wrapped in a flour crust.
The elderly female patient said, “You are new here, it seems. You must be hungry. I know this clinic doesn’t feed you enough. So here. Here I have some manjus so why don’t you eat one right here, right now. I won’t tell anyone about it.”
I answered her, “No, thank you.”
She asked me again. “Aren’t you hungry? You don’t have to hesitate. Here, go ahead and eat it in this room.”
She stretched out her arm and tried to give me the manju.
I said to her, “Thank you, but I just ate breakfast so I’m not hungry. You enjoy it later, please.”
She said, “Well, well, what a clean mouth you have!” and smiled at me. (In Japan, this was a compliment since it shows that you do not eat between meals and are well-mannered.)
I thought, “Actually, it’s just that I don’t like azuki, especially manju. But please do not talk to me because I am too busy to talk with you. I have eighteen rooms to clean in twenty minutes.” I took out my irritation and stress on the broom as I continued sweeping many floors.
After finishing the cleaning of patients’ rooms, Senpai-1 came to me and asked me if the old female patient offered me some food or not.
I said, “Yes, she did. Manju.”
Senpai-1 said, “You didn’t receive it, did you!?!”
I said, “No, I didn’t.”
Senpai-1 said, “Wise girl. That lady has often offered food like that and later she tells the Okusama about it. Never receive anything from her. Do you understand?”
I said, “I got it.” But I thought again in my mind, “Telling me such important things earlier would be a big help for me, though.”
Senpai-1 told me that now we would have to go back downstairs and help the doctor in his office.
Help the doctor? On my very first day? How? My head was spinning, like a merry-go-round with too much heavy oil and grease.
To be continued…
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