Medical Emergency

Yesterday was my first time I witnessed a life and death situation.

Let me relate it form the beginning...

Me and a fellow colleague were assigned to interview a patient at Ward2 KKB hospital. As both of us joined in a mafia game the previous night and slept late, we were both dazed in the morning. Therefore we both of us didn't quite get which patient we were to go to. Anyway we went to Ward 2...

Then, as we 'heard' we were to go to bed4, we went ahead to see the patient. She was sitting upright and had a depressed look. We greeted her and began our interview. She's a 65 year old Malay diabetic with severe complications.

But throughout the few minutes we were talking to her, we realized her mind wasn't there. I asked my colleague who is quite a joker to crack something up. Unfortunately, it didn't quite work. We came to the conclusion that she was sad as she had been admitted in Selayang hospital for 2months and was transferred to KKB the day before. Then we decided not to torture her with any more questions. So we headed of for lunch, leaving her to rest.

Then that afternoon, our group had bed-side teaching at the same Ward. The doctor asked another 2 colleagues to give their presentation and well....he seemed annoyed that they were a little not systematic. He asked them to proceed with a physiacl examination. Then he had a call and left us for what seemed like an eternity. I was a little agitated by then and decided to go talk to my assigned patient. She was due for haemodialysis and I wondered why she wasn't attended to.

But I was startled when I saw her. Her eyes was staring blankly and she was 'groaning'. Her right hand was gripping tightly to the bed and she didn't respond when I called her. I noticed she was still breathing and her eyes were still blinking. Then I decided to call my colleague. We didn't know what to do and decided to call the nurses. At first they seem reluctant cause they sayed she was sleeping...but with the eyes opened???

But 1 nurse decided to check her glucose level and it was 1.3mmol! She was hypo already! Quite slowly (but surely) they tried to feed her some glucose and teh. But she wasn't responding and they called the doctor.

To cut the whole thing short, they managed, with difficulty, to adminster glucose i.v. and she recovered. At 1 moment her bp was 248/92 and she had stridor.

We all were just standing helplessly watching the doctor and nurses. I said a silent prayer (I was guilty to as earlier I said that at her age and her health condition, it would be better if God took her home peacefully).

Anyway she was fine when we had to leave. I never came so close to a situation like that and was shocked to see what diabetes can lead to. Not many of us truly understand how bad this disease can be.