After yesterdays lie in I was back up at 0720 this morning, swift coffee/porridge (as I start every day) and walked in. The board round was brief, as not many patients were expected during the day and many of the occupants of CAU were expected to be discharged home at some point. It was the F1s final day here, so much cake was consumed and goodbyes said. I attached myself to the surgical ward round, and made myself useful by looking up some bloods for the new F1. After that I headed off to follow the anaesthetist through the days list.
The list was varied, and I had the chance to get hands on with some of the procedures. Slightly embarrasingly however one of the patients needed a particular anaesthetic block doing, where I had the job of pushing the plunger on the syringe whilst the anaesthetist was directing the needle in the sterile field. Unfortunately there was quite a lot of resistance to the injection, and consequently after trying to depress the plunger for a few seconds the plastic tubing on the end promptly shot off due to the pressure build up and I sprayed the contents over everyone... oh dear! Luckily the patient was asleep by this time. No harm done, except to my ego. Could have happened to anyone (...). Lesson learnt: when it's resistant to injection, hold the tubing on the end of the syringe!
The list ran all day, so I got some lunch some time in the early afternoon, and sampled some of the goodbye cakes, which were excellent! Back in theatre I had the opportunity to do more cannulas, bag/mask ventilating and LMA insertions. It was good just to get used to the various tips and tricks, such as drawing up antibiotics (you have to push air into the vial before you can draw up the fluid) and holding various syringe sizes, as I'd never used a 1ml syringe to inject local anaesthetic before. With these sorts of things it only takes being told once and you'll remember it pretty much forever, but it you're never told how to hold it at the start you'll never do it right! Also I never get bored of holding the ventilator bag and feeling the bag fill up and empty with each of the patients breaths - it's amazing.
The only slight disappointment during the day was the one intubation we had turned out to be quite tricky to ventilate, and so the anaesthetist just cracked on and placed the endotracheal tube. I've only done one in the past, so I'd really like to get some more under my belt but obviously only if everythings going OK patient wise. We finished at around 1700 and I walked back to the house with Helen, via tesco to pick up a microwave curry, massively cheating, but given the lack of kitchen facilities at our accomodation I feel it's justified!
Curry, sponge pudding, muffin and hot chocolate later and I was pretty much done for the day, knackered! My legs hadn't been too bad during the day, just felt tired from the previous two days out. I skyped Alice and rang my sister, as it was her birthday today! After a bit of TV and a nap I felt slightly refreshed, so got the violin out again and, under the watchful eye of Helen, ran through a few folk tunes. Every time I play it's getting better, but I still find the bowing pretty difficult, and sometimes get muddled between the bass clef/cello fingering and the treble clef/violin fingering. It'll come with time. Listened to the Bach Partita No 2, played by Hilary Hahn on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcnbVykOEuY) - amazing, hopefully be able to play some of it one day!
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