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…