Intern Chronicles…1/2

“It’s final; you’d be starting at the Cornwall Regional Hospital,” she said, as she handed each of us, a cream cardboard paper. The council office where we needed to register, was going to close in five minutes, and as there was no point trying to do the impossible and beat the close-of-work traffic, the three of us just stared at the certificate-texture paper in our hands, wondering what the next one year of this new phase would hold.

Before I keep ranting, you should probably know a bit of the background story. I finished medical school in May, 2019. Well I wrote my finals in April, but the official degree has the month of May on it- not really an issue. I just put a little emphasis on the timing to illustrate how long I had been officially job-hunting. Wrote my finals in April, and started internship in July. Sounds like a fairy-tale, right? Some people are probably reading this and saying, “Oh, what a lucky person she is; she wasn’t idle for a long period of time.” Others simply don’t care. Whichever category your mindset is in, 🤷🏾‍♀️

It might have been barely four months, but I certainly wasn’t idle. I pretty much went round the entire country of Jamaica, applying to the different sub-regions of the hospitals. That also included me spending the little money I had left, taking the bus weekly, to the Ministry of Health located an hour and a half from my small town. The heavens were with me; my Father smiled upon me, and I did get the internship after months of endless applications.

We registered at the council the next day, and then we set out to the local sub-region governing Cornwall Regional Hospital (commonly referred to as CRH), for another round of registration. We spent two days in the city of Montego Bay trying to look for apartments before the work assumption deadline. After enduring the rain, which claimed my beloved pair of loafers, we were able to get a little something that needed us to be working for about three months, to fully furnish for comfort living. But we all need to start small, right?

Amidst a few tears, we relocated to begin our new journey. I can’t go into all the details as this would require an entire book to be published, with a book tour and all, but one very important gist I cannot leave out is the fact that we were practically homeless, on day one of our new lives. HOW? Miscommunication that the landlord wasn’t willing to compromise on, even though we were legit. Oh, now might be a good time to chip in the fact that none of us is Jamaican. So, there’s still the language and speech barrier, to some extent. Anyways, the landlord threw us out into the street in the night, which got me wondering what he would have done, if we were actual criminals. He wasn’t even sympathetic to the fact that we were tired and had travelled from a far place, or that it was seven-thirty in the night and darkness had covered the land. By a miracle, a total stranger took us in and even said we could stay in the house he had to rent for two weeks, till we found our bearings. No, it wasn’t free. We did have to pay, and dare I say that was the very first time in my life, seeing a raw, live video tape of ‘The Sound of Music.’ The house had trophies that were old enough to be my grandparents, if they were animate. Or human. And my allergies also posed another problem. Plus, Mr. Total Stranger, wasn’t entirely Mr. Nice Stranger at the end of the day. He wanted to extort poor, innocent us! What a way to start the next one year!

The Senior Medical Officer (SMO) was a really nice fellow. He gave us a good orientation on our first day, and even bought us lunch. CRH was built probably in the I-actually-do-not-recall-the-year-but-maybe-fifties? The building once housed about four hundred and odd beds, and all the doctors had to live on the compound, in the numerous quarters for them. Everyone wanted to come to CRH. Everyone’s grandparents and parents wanted to be treated at CRH. Everyone’s wife, sister and daughter wanted to have their baby at CRH. Sounds like the dream, yeah? Anyone ever watch Titanic? Well, the story of CRH is tots like the Titanic. And just like the Titanic, CRH kinda fell. Something about the vents and pollution, and long story cut short, the once magnificent building was now under re-construction, and the wards had to be relocated to where the doctors’ quarters were, and well, doctors now had to live outside the hospital compound.

There were many times I questioned my choice of career. One such time was the night I got absolutely no rest whatsoever. It was Dengue fever season, with everyone and their relative catching Dengue, having to come to the hospital, and many needing platelet transfusions (one of the dangers of the illness). On this night, we had three critical cases. It was so terrible that three of us interns had to manually ventilate the patients and we were getting called every minute for problems on the wards.

Being one hundred percent real now, one thing I legit have- no, need to do one of these days, before starting the new phase, is get re-baptized. Have a good chuckle. I am a Christian. Before the start of internship, I tried to be true to myself as a Christian; going to church, being as good as I could be, praying to my Father…Internship surely changed all that, and I’m not merely talking about the fact that it was hard to attend church every Sunday. That, sure was a struggle, but my need for re-baptism is for my thoughts. Internship had me silently praying for a person’s life to end! No, just hear me out before you lay a curse on me or insult me. Imagine working hard all day on your feet, with no rest at all. There’s pressure from the residents, the nurses, even the patients. Then in the night, when sons of men are asleep, you have to manually ventilate an intubated patient, while still having tons of blood tests to carry out on newly admitted patients, and the ward calling you to review old patients that sometimes, deliberately seek to frustrate the healthcare workers. And by manually ventilating, I mean bagging. Who has ever attended a CPR class, or watched a CPR scene on TV, and someone is holding a pump-thingy to the person’s nose, and pressing on it, while someone else compresses the chest? For those of you who have that pump-thingy, imagine you have to do that for as long as ten, twelve, even twenty-eight hours, non-stop? You’d pray for the person to pass within one hour of attempting it. So yeah, internship had me wishing people dead, just so I’d stop bagging, cos it hurt, and you couldn’t drop asleep. Good luck, wanting to go to the bathroom, or eating. And on the same night, with three critical cases, I had to perform CPR about five times? Yeah, it wasn’t the best night. And the next morning, on the ward, during regular hours, another ‘code’ as we call it. So CPR six times. I practically slumped, by the time I was done for the day.

Don’t get me wrong. Internship wasn’t all that bad. There were good times too. There were some cool departments with cool residents, who let me go home by midday; some departments, I went home by ten in the morning! And not all residents were snarky. The nurses however, different ball-game. I am convinced that most nurses resent the fact that doctors get paid more than they do. But sir, ma, medical school is a year more than nursing, with a lot harder work. Not trying to downplay their work in any way, but guys, check this out: I’m a doctor on duty. That means I come to work by eight on Monday morning, work all day plus evening, don’t go home Tuesday morning- nope! Work till Tuesday afternoon/night; sometimes, we get lucky and we get to rest, some days, not so lucky and we’re zombies by Tuesday evening. Nurses, on the other hand, have shifts. They work in eight-hour shifts; more recently twelve-hour, but still. Not all nurses are snarky though. For some weird reason, it’s only the ones who come in for the night shift from ten to seven the next morning, who give an attitude. It’s like, aunty, uncle, I’m busy. I can’t work at the same level of energy you have. You practically could have done nothing all day, and just came in for work at ten and you want me, who’s been up and about since eight in the morning to come and see the one patient you want me to see, so you can be done and hurry to sleep. You have to wait and please, try not to get an attitude while at it. Hey, I’ve also met some of the best nurses who ever walked the face of the earth and they let me catch a break and covered for me, big time, on many occasions.

I had no problem with most of my consultants. That was a huge blessing for me, cos unlike what many people think, I’m very fragile at heart, and would not be able to completely stomach it if I have the spawn of Satan (excuse my Spanish) as a consultant. Some of the other hospital workers like the housekeepers and patient care assistants, had their moments as well. On some days, it was like watching an episode of Glee: everyone trying to outshine the other. I just kept on going with one mindset- I’m not in a competition with any of you, just here to do my time. Fellow interns were all chill. Well, for the most part, that was the case. On some occasions, there were some Kim-Kardashian wannabes trying to act like the Three Wise Men. Oh wait, before I forget, did I mention that in the first month of internship, two staff members were, what-would-I-term-it…keeping malice with me, cos of one of the guys I started internship with? 🤯 Remember I said we were not Jamaicans? Well, turns out Jamaican women fancy our men for whatever reason, and so, these ones were shunning me cos they thought the guy and I were a couple. I laugh! I actually thought I was making it up in my head until one day, said guy came to my department to check up on me, and another staff member outside the door asked him if we were dating. One of them was within earshot, and her smile could have lit up an entire Christmas tree when she heard the answer was no. Plus, from that day onward, she was nicer to me. Silver lining, maybe?

Two glorious occasions I’d never forget; one- I was out in the town one day, and I entered a jewel/scent shop with my friends. The man recognized me before I, him. His son had been a patient at the hospital some weeks earlier, and I had attended to him. I was the intern on call, and had had to transfuse him, even though during regular work hours, he was a patient of another team within the same department. Said son was also around in the shop, and the father insisted on gifting me a perfume to express his thanks. That actually did melt my heart, seeing the son hale and hearty and really toned up from the fragile-looking patient on the hospital bed, throwing up and shivering weeks earlier. At a very much later day, I went to the supermarket, and I ran into the mother of one of my former patients. I almost shed tears of joy when she showed me the pictures of her little girl- someone we desperately prayed would survive after she was born. She spent about two months in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), practically fighting for her life- she was born preterm and had a lot of complications. It was divine to see how she had grown in the weeks following her discharge. It was nothing short of a miracle.

I also recall the first person I had to do CPR on, who did not make it, and whom I had to pronounce dead, and inform the family members. It was heart-breaking and so much more than Grey’s Anatomy and other medical shows portrayed. That was considerably one of the hardest parts of the job; having to inform the relatives of a patient that their loved one was no more. Yes, some of the patients had all the medical complications known to man, and had very slim chances from the start but still, you don’t ever have to be the one looking at a person and telling them that you tried all you could but their relative is gone to the world beyond. I was always glad when a patient passed on in the night, at odd hours. No, not glad that the patient didn’t make it- that’s sad; glad cos it would be until the morning before the relatives could make it to the hospital and by the time they came, it would be on the managing team to deliver the news. And all ages have passed on, so you really don’t want to tell a person that their fifteen-year old son or daughter or niece or nephew or ward is just gone. Like, how old am I?

…

to be continued…