Went in at 1 this morning to help the night time radiographer switch the department on, after a generator change, to find that everything came on 2 hours before, so stayed for an hour, went to do a couple of patients on mobiles, but decided they could wait 'till morning (wasn't going to wake them up at half one to see if a NG tube was correctly fitted, that the patient had been fed through (without issue) since it was placed/ wasn't going to wake a little old dear up to check if her infection had gone down when she was in the best place if it hadn't) had a hot chocolate and went to bed.
Then got up at 8:45 (so officially a late start) to go into work and found I was in room 7 all day x-raying the ward patients (always upsetting because they're normally really old people that are in a bad way) but today was particularly crazy.
2 patients stood out most, because of the pure contrast of them.
The first one was an 87 year old lady who was adamant that she wanted to die, kept on literally screaming prayers to god to take her and end her suffering, so sat I and talked to her to bring her round and to allow us to do the x-ray, we spent so long discussing whether she really wanted to "see god" so soon, her reasoning was that she didn't know what was wrong, so I sat and explained that while yes this was hard, the pictures would help the doctor help her understand what was wrong, didn't do much to make her feel better but she did stop asking god to take her, so maybe I reached her, maybe she started praying internally, but the way she kept on saying how unhappy she was makes me think I helped changed her view on life.
As we took her out my next patient was telling her how well she'd done (he obviously didn't know what had gone on in the room, but must have heard what she was saying and was clearly trying to make her feel better (instantly liked this patient before I'd even spoke to him, just for his pure selflessness)) then we brought him in and he was cracking jokes and kept flirting with the radiographer in a dead sly way (un beknown to her) and whilst we were positioning him (which was clearly very painful) kept on smiling and had me in stitches on at least two occasions, and I think he genuinely enjoyed the company and the laughter and joking he got out of us (now whether he was doing it to pick us back up having heard what we'd gone through or was just a genuinely happy guy I don't know, but he was great) he was so patient with me (told me the best way to lean him forward to get the x-ray plate behind him (before quickly saying "not like I'm telling you how to do your job, but this seems to have worked so far" (was SO pleased when he said that because I had no idea how to lean forward a patient with a recently operated on shoulder without causing too much pain (I'm a big fan of positioning patients whilst causing minimal pain, and always look for the easiest way for them))
So I'd gone from mega upset to having a giant grin on my face in the space of 30 minutes.
Then some time passed and it got to 16:45 and there was a giant back log of patients, so me and a radiographer got 10 forms together, I checked they were all ready to x-ray at that very moment, and rattled off 10 patients in 15 minutes (she stood behind the screen and pushed the button, I ran backwards and forwards, collecting, talking to, positioning and explaining procedures to patients, before running behind the screen whilst the radiographer started to expose (for those that don't know, you prep an x-ray tube before you expose the radiation, so as I was running behind the screen shouting "BREATH IN NOOWW, HOOLLLD YOUR BREATH" she was already prepping it, so as I stepped behind the screen she exposed, I waited the 10 seconds, or whatever, for the image to come up on the screen and to be told "that's fine" by the radiographer, picked up the next form, and walked out and told the patient they were finished and could go home and their GP would get the results, and started the cycle again with the next patient.
Safe to say I'm knackered beyond compare!
Been a hard day, but a bloody good one none the less.
Liam
OUT!
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