Exciting Night

What started of as a boring first day of night duty turned out to be the most exciting that ever happened in my 2 years of working life! It may just be ordinary events but at least it made my night shift a little more unpredictable.

So here I was, arriving for duty as usual at 10.30pm. And since this was the first day that the ward was open after the renovation and CNY holidays, I didn't expect it to be a full ward. Well, I wasn't that spot on. I came to find only 2 patients...... It was kind of a shock, but I didn't mind the lack of patients (because I know the ward will be full again within the next day or so). So I started vital signs as usual and completed my usual routine within half an hour. By 12am, I found myself too free. So we did some cleaning up and re-labelling of the drawers. The ward was still kind of messy because we were lacking some dividers (in the cabinets and drawers) and so, many documents haven't found their rightful homes yet.

While we were organizing the ward, some of the renovation workers (on night duty) started their work too, hoping to complete their last round of work by the coming morning. And so everything was smooth sailing.

Then at 3am, the lights went off with a pop and suddenly there was a loud beeping sound from the medication room (no worries, no bombs to be found). At first I wasn't worried, coz' I thought the workers accidentally caused the power trip and they will restore it ASAP. So I was surprised when the friendly worker came out and asked me, "Oi, apa jadi??? Kenapa tak ada electric?" To which I replied, "Hah? Bukan lu potong ka itu electric? Aiyo! Why no electric wan??!"

And so Mr. Friendly Worker said, "Oh, tak apa. Saya tolong kamu switch back itu electric." And so he went into the switch room and did his stuff. I thought, maybe give him 15 minutes. So friendly worker toiled in the switch room for some time. And when he came out like 30mins after, he said "Aiyo! Cannot flip back la the switch!! What's wrong ah?!"
"How I know?! Aiya...." my reply came.

And so began my night in total darkness. I groped for the phone and called the engineering on-call staff and located my night supervisor and told her my predicament. I really thank God that there were only 2 patients! And my female patient freaked out because the power went off with a loud pop. The other male patient slept like a baby (thank goodness..). And so we waited for the engineering staff to come. And my supervisor told me that the staff (Mr. Yee) stayed in Balik Pulau! That's like 13km away from my hospital!!! So in the meantime, we got out torchlights from the dusty storeroom. And the supervisor got some fluorescent lamps from security base. Both lasted 2 minutes because they had not been charged. And she got some more lamps from the nursing office. One worked well because it was new. The other 3 torchlights used up a total of 8 "D" sized batteries and still could not be used! They were ancient........... God bless them.

45 minutes later, Mr. Yee arrived! Hallelujah! I thought this interesting event would be over fast. Lo and behold he could not find the source of the power trip! (p/s: we could not use the generator because this was a local power trip, meaning confined only to my ward) And in the meantime, my patient was sweating profusely because it was hot and stuffy and the mozzies were killing us, literally. So I found another bed for her to camp on temporarily while we suss out the problem. And I sat alone in the darkness with a single light for company while kungfu fighting all the mozzies.

It was a silly sight to behold as I lugged along a fluorescent lamp to check my patient's vital signs and the patient gave me a "look". Who wouldn't? Funnier more was when I emptied his urinary catheter and held the jug up to the lamp to see the amount and colour of the urine I emptied. I felt like I was in the pre-war era, a single Florence Nightingale with a kerosene lamp along the hospital corridor. Horror movies anyone?

And the house supervisor said that if the power failure could not be sorted out, my two patients will have to be transferred out to other wards. So I started booking rooms from the next ward. Oh did I mention my PYXIS station (electronic medicine dispenser and supplies stock-cupboard thingy) were making loud beeping noises?? As in LOUD BEEPING NOISES. It was damn loud and I found out the reason for these beeps was because they were now running on battery power. They were reminding you that they need AC support! And just before they went out, the beeping got persistently frequent and louder!! And finally they went out too. Which I was grateful for because the beeping simply stopped! Hallelujah I sang ^__^

After what seemed like a decade, the smart man finally got the power supply back! It was 5am by then and I had almost fell asleep in the darkness. And I forgot to mention that my infusion pump also went out of battery life and could not be charged because the power supply was out. So I decided to change to another pump. When I tried all the pumps in the cabinet, all those in the "reachable" cabinet were out of battery life too! And those higher up, I could not reach! Sigh... Luckilly I had one with 2 more bars of battery life. Sigh.... (these things make a loud beeping noise too when the battery is dying...)

Why am I telling you this story? Because I'm trying to stay awake as best as I could while flitting through web pages online. And I hate mozzies. And I think this was an interesting night. And because I will never have only 2 patients ever again.

I found that a singer by the name of Jane Zhang Liang Ying from mainland China is a super singer with a pitch that is in the whistle register (that's like the highest register of the human voice, even higher than the falsetto!) (e.g. Mariah Carey, Minnie Riperton - who sang Lovin' You). Well, she sings well too! Catch her latest duet with my beloved Wang Lee Hom.

p/s: I thought it was the electric guitar, till I realized that it was HER singing! OMG!