When I have been working nights in an emergency, and dealing with patients the best way I can, the worst thing that pisses me off is a patient's attendant calling me a sister ( universal slang for nurse) and asking me to change the "GULCOZE bottle"....
Its amazing how much power that single bottle of sodium chloride and sucrose holds over these people that they literally count the last 1000 odd drops of the vanishing elixir and come running to ensure the uninterrupted supply when the previous bottle has been downed....
Normally I handle the "Sister" tag and the war of worlds over the IV Fluids very well...but especially on a Post Emergency day, especially when I haven't slept the night ( I don't like it when I get time to sleep, I sleep almost 3 hours in this present unit, and I don't like it when I do so) , and am surviving on my sole adrenaline rush arising from the fact that I managed the chaotic night not too badly, this innocuous inquiry of patients' attendants adds just that spark to the bundle of withered dynamite....
And do I erupt....Sometimes I feel sorry about the way, but then I cannot hold back, especially because after the shower is over people do not nag me about being a sister for another week...System is chaotic here because, nurses wear almost the same uniform here as doctors, the blue salwar kameez being hidden beneath the white apron...In SCB, nurses always wore that blue salwar kameez or a saree, and a cap...I miss that latter...it looked beautiful on young students coming to do their ward rounds. Sure girls here are prettier, rosier and almost angelic just that the scene of about fifteen odd white caps bobbong up and down in unison to the head matron's ministrations looked good to me then....
Here I am always in an apron, and the code we ( myself and my Co-PG have devised to deal with our ordeal sometimes turns the table back on us...So imagine my consternation when Payal my Co-PG sends an attendant to find a "Sister is in a blue dress" and the hapless man literally comes panting to my side to ask me to change the IV line....I was wearing a blue kurta that day...
For a change, I had smiled.
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