I am so jonah!

For those of you not in the medical field, you might not be familiar with this most terrified terms among the doctors. JONAH. Well, jonah is not a person like Cik Jonah or sumthing. It is actually a verb (hrmm..or is it actually a noun?) to describe how busy you were when you are oncall. I know it is superstitious but these kejonahan has been been mentioned for as long as I can remember.

Let me give you an example. I am very jonah these days everytime that I am oncall. That means, a lot of admissions, more ill cases in my ward, many patients decided to collapse during my time (or is destined by God to deteriorate) and in turn high mortality rate!

On busy calls, sometimes you don't even have time to eat and don't you even mention about sleeping. Well, I'll be lucky if I can just have an hour of uninterrupted nap. You are sleep deprived for over 36 hours, you are desperately in need of food and you best mate is a strong cup of coffee just to keep you awake.

So basically, let me sum up how my call was last night.

I had 2 admissions to acute bay in NICU simultaneously! One is premature baby who was intubated and another case of Indonesian baby with meconium aspiration syndrome. At the same time, I was called to the operating theater to stand by for an emergency LSCS whose baby was suspected to have hydrops fetalis (a life threatening condition). Sad to say, the baby came out in a really bad condition and passed away shortly after she was delivered. My heart goes out the young parents..

Anyways, baru nak siap keja, there was an emergency bell from the labour room at 12 mid night (which means baby came out blue and not breathing). Macam nak tercabut kaki okeh sprint ke labour room! Turned out, another Indonesian who did not have proper antenatal check up, postdate ntah berapa hari. Baby came out real bad that I had to do CPR! Miraculously the baby survived but I couldn't tell on the long term outcome for the poor baby. The blood was sooo acidotic the the cord pH was 6.7, almost resembles corpes' blood (means the baby lacked of oxygen for a long time before delivery)!

I finally settled everything by 4.30am and I was so mentally and physically exhausted. I realized that I hadn't eat anything since lunch on previous day but I was too sleepy to even think about food. I answered 3 phone calls in between my drowsiness and had to wake up after an hour to continue my endless work.

Met my colleagues in the morning and they are all agreed, I am so JONAH (even my houseman agreed on that)!

I finally went back in the afternoon, played with Hana for a while before slumbered into unconsciousness...