Bad day
1/7/09…
I was post call… And the call was the craziest I’ve ever had. At 1am 1/7/09, patients came in non stop. I was alone in PAC (with 2 staff nurses and 1 JM, of course). To make things worse, they were all in active phase of labour (all of them with os >5cm and contractions at least 2:10; i.e should be sent to labour room IMMEDIATELY!) and the labour rooms were full!!!
*** This situation is NOT an everyday occurence at my hospital. There are times when the labour room was so quiet I could have slept the entire night (but I stupidly didn’t
).
Talk about bad luck.
Triaging and sending them to the labour room was really chaotic but a fun experience when I think about it now.
Something else happened too but I shall refrain from writing about it here. No, I didn’t do anything wrong to any patient. It’s just that something happened that night causing my specialist and registrar to mark me as their future O&G MO. No, I didn’t do anything great either. Don’t get all hyped up. It could have just been cynicism on their part.
Anyway, that post call day…
I was about to leave the labour room just before 5pm when an MO called me to post up a patient for emergency LSCS for fetal distress. As I sat in front of the computer (to book OT), she announced that the os was full and we were going to deliver the baby.
Less than a minute later, a senior MO came in to ask what was happening. For some reason, he ended up delivering the baby. With the baby out, he turned to me and said, ” Nuraini, she’s all yours.” (and mumbled something about me being able to handle any obstetrics cases; no thanks to what happened during my call the previous night)
In disbelief, I looked at the clock. It was 5pm. Damn!I thought I could go back by 5pm.
Anyway, I delivered the placenta and repaired the episiotomy and perineal tear. Don’t worry. I always do my job properly even though I was so extremely damn sleepy. Even the (very experienced) staff nurse said my sutures were beautifully done.
At 5.40pm, I happily left the hospital. Somehow, my car didn’t feel right. I didn’t know what was wrong but I could sense something wasn’t right. Actually, I’ve been feeling that way for the past 1 week and I’ve been ignoring it but that day, the feeling was much stronger than ever.
Less than 5 minutes later, as I was cruising at 100km/h on the PLUS highway, I heard the faint sound of something breaking. A few seconds later, I saw smokes and debris from the side of my car and the unmistakable sound of a flat tyre.
I immediately pulled over (at KM451.5) and to my horror, saw this:

.
I called PLUS Helpline to request for assistance, followed by calls to Ba’ah (he didn’t answer the phone) and Mama to inform that I’d be home late.
Yes, when I saw the tyre, I was screaming out in my mind all the expletives I could come up with. Luckily all that went away once I’ve called PLUS. Then I started to enjoy the moment. I mean, how often do you get such an experience?
I took out the chocolate muffins and apple juice that I bought just before I left the hospital (my last meal was at 8pm the previous night) and had a ‘picnic’ by the roadside.
Those two muffins and a packet of apple juice lasted me for the next 20 hours. I totally conked out the moment I reached home, only to wake up (quite late) the following morning - no time for breakfast - and only managed to have lunch at 3pm the following day.
Surprisingly, with this kind of ‘diet’, I’m not losing weight (do remember that I’m actually trying to gain weight so I’m very happy for not losing weight) but strangely enough, all my clothes are getting loose.

View from where I sat.
.
About 25 minutes later, help arrived.
It was so embarrassing to open up my car boot and they saw how messy it was (it still is!
).

.
I was really fortunate that it was the rear tyre that went flat. If it was the front one… And I was driving at 100km/h… Errmmm, let’s not think about it, ok?
Yesterday, Ba’ah took my car to the workshop (I drove Mama’s car to work) and had a new pair of tyres as well as a new set of rims installed. Total damage was RM1.2k.
There goes my on call claims.




































