Internship chronicles

I definitely have had happy moments but nothing compares to the night I completed my end of medical school exams. The days that followed  were filled with mixed reactions, I have spent almost half my productive years in school pursuing a single degree while my social expectations were still unmet. We all know the traditional family, career with three dogs ideal scenario. Anyway I packed my little belongings  and headed for my internship, armed with a Hippocratic oath on one hand  ,a licence on the other and a stethoscope dangling from my neck, all set to relieve suffering from humanity. One thing I must confess I feared was the popular calls ,one, because my love for sleep comes second after God, and second I had heard harrowing stories about them. There came my first call and here I was set to be circumcised into the profession.  I had been ambulating from 7am  in the paedriatric department trying to fix cannulas  for aggressive children who obviously  didn't like my presence. Time moved fast and before I knew it, it was clocking 5pm and I hadn't had my planned prophylactic one hour sleep. I sighed as I examined my last patient, and as I headed for the exit my phone rang. It's 5.07 pm. 'Daktari there is a patient in the male ward who needs a review 'says the caller. I headed straight  to the male ward to find an aggressive well-built patient  and a mean nurse. All my tired brain could offer was a flashback of the lecture on an approach to an aggressive patient, no details whatsoever. Whatever I did is a story for another day. I'm called for two more resuscitation, the nurse demands I fix 6 more lines for some new admissions and by the time I catch my breathe it is 10 pm. I'm super tired ,exhausted and hungry .I head to my house and even before I could switch on my lights my phone rings, this time it is maternity calling. They have 5 patients I have to review, 2 are fetal distresses. I'm already in distress. I take a glass of juice and head back to the hospital. The last time I read obstetrics was 3 Years ago all I could remember was something called Leopold's maneuver  .Whatever the maneuver was  for is something beyond my cauda equina  .In my mind  I'm wondering who invented it, was it the great King Leopold's 1 or 2 of Congo. Before I settle on the answer, I'm already at the maternity ward. Cries of pain  mixed with baby  cries rent the air perhaps reassuring them of the China debts  that  awaited them. I'm handed  7 files. All the maternity nurses are talking at once. 'Daktari hawa watatu tupeleke CS hawawezipush the rest  utuambie tufanye nini '. I'm confused . On doing the VEs I'm more confused. Kwanza I cannot tell what anatomy my hands are feeling  .Everything feels fleshy. I remove my gloves and decide  the mothers will have cervical dilatations of 3, 4, 6 and 8 from the youngest to the oldest. By now I'm operating on the bora uhai slogan. Listening to their FHR convinced me that I must have maternity induced hearing loss or just wax maybe. I give up and decided all the mothers had fetal distress. End of story. Prepare for emergency CS  I indicate on their files. It's 1 am, I call my second on call who laughs at my diagnosis and tells me to repeat my obstetric examination in  the next 30 minutes. Now I have to decide on what their next cervical dilatation and FHRs will be. To cut the long story short, we ended up doing 3 caeserians that night. By the time we finish it is 5.17 am. 4 more calls come from the OPD. The last one is at 7 :15 am , a snake bite. I couldnt understand what the patient was describing, but he kept pointing at his bite wound and back at a black plastic bag .Im too tired to  look for a translator.As I continued scribbling on the prescription sheet, the man gets up picks his plastic bag and without warning spills it contents. Lo and behold  there lies a large snake. I get flushes  ,chills ,pins, needles and fevers.My heart is pacing and in one second, I flew for the door leaving behind a bewildered patient. I couldn't ascertain the cardiopulmonary status of the snake, we all can guess what it was, dead off course, but I swear I saw it's tail wiggle. It was time to flee for my life