1st December (Monday) - It's the first day of December and I was praying hard that nothing bad will happen to me as we move towards the end of the year. But this is ME we are talking about, I don't find trouble, TROUBLE always finds ME. God knows how much more bad luck I can take.
It all started off like normal. Taking care of Datin again. No, I won't complain. I already accept the fact that she and I are inseparable. Just like me and one of my college partners, joined to the hip etc etc. Her daughter came out to complain that from 9 o' clock nobody bothered to do her mother's PICC dressing. Well, what would you do? I grabbed the dressing trolley and get started. Then off we go. Normal saline, swab here there, cleaned out the clots, and secured with gauze and plasters. Yep, that's all I can do for now.
Then I got a call from the OT. They asked me whether I want a trolley or not. Well, since the Sister and CI were making a big enough noise about only Ortho (Bone) cases are allowed trolley. So I asked my TL and she said, just get the trolley. Okay, trolley it is. I prepared my patient nice and easy, and off we go. Hoo-boy. I got yelled the anaest Sigh, she said, "Under no circumstances, all of my patient should be on BED. Do I make myself clear, staff nurse?!" Okay, okay, I think we're going to need a list that says Neuro and Ortho cases should be on bed, and others should be on trolleys. Sad to say, I ended up making two rounds to get the bed down together with the PCA form since they ran out.
Once done I did vital signs checking and had dinner. Not much to say here, and then at 7 I offered to do Datin's dressing early so that I can save the night shift from much trouble, since her dressing takes an hour or more. Since 7 is prayer time, I let her pray finish fist. At 7 plus, she called me to heat up her food and that's when things become worse.
Ever since she first asked me to heat up her food, I had always done it with ease, in Tupperware. Unfortunately, my luck seemed to have run out. As always, I jab non stop at the buttons. One of the attendants couldn't stand me jabbing the buttons like mad so she taught me a shortcut. Heating up with a push of a button. I wanted 3 minutes since whenever I always put 1 - 2 minutes it doesn't heat up at all...
What's that smell??? It smells like burnt tires mixed with plastic. With a sense of foreboding, I jumped to the microwave and HOLY COW, the entire Tupperware MELTED!!!!! MELTED LIKE ICE CREAM SLUDGE!!!! The beef meat mixed with the melted yellow sludge like something out of a disaster. Worse, the whole odour smells like burning. OH MY GOD. Everyone came running into the pantry while I was scraping the yellow melted sludge while disposing the burnt plastic with the meat, burning my fingers in the process, not too badly though. There was a lot of yelling going on and everyone thought there's a fire going on. Well, of course, it smells really bad. Luckily no one called the fire brigade. Even the lifts and the whole floor smells like it's on fire. I was so worried but I am willing to own up, even if it means paying for the Tupperware. After getting all of the food heated, I went back to Datin and owned up, apologizing that I must've accidently set up the heat too high because usually when I heat up her food, it never gets burnt. She felt sorry for me and kept apologizing as well for causing me trouble. I told her that I'm also at fault because I was the one who used the microwave.The bright side was, no one got hurt, and the microwave is still usable, after I scrapped the melted plastic sludge off the glass and cleaned it. Datin also said that she'll bring her own microwave instead of using ours to prevent another incident like this from happening. What can I say? I can't say anything, I felt bad too. My TL asked me whether Datin was furious but I said she was really nice about it, and blamed herself for the incident. She even got the housekeeping to spray the ward with fresh air cleanser to purify the air. I can't say the same for my lungs though. I kept choking and trying to vomit out the fumes but no success. What shocked me was Tupperwares are usually sturdy, not cheap unknown brands, and yet it can melt like mad. What a fiasco.
After we set our apologies straight,I soaked her leg and did her dressing for her. Because I was so exhausted and weakened by the fumes that I can't cough out, she asked her family to help me out. In between., we talked about normal stuff, like how in UK you actually buy a large tub of Maltese, similar to how you can get large tubs of popcorns in the cinema. I joked with her that we might get sick from it and her daughter commented that we'll all probably get diabetes from it, besides the politics and the recent news and such. Even her son helped, such a cute little boy and eager to help. I joked that he could probably be a nurse and they said, "Why not a doctor?" At least they tried to make me feel better as I layered upon layered of Jelonet rolls and pads with large gamgee wools with bandages.
After the microwave incident, a patient asked whether we have a microwave to heat up food and all of us groaned. Me, in particular, buried my face into my hands with the gamgee I'm holding and ran into the report room. My TL went, "Sorry, our microwave is history." Thanks, TL. I think we all had enough of microwaves for a day.
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