"You are my strength, strength like no other. Reaches to me"

Just ended my round of night shifts, i'm really thankful that in KKH we only do two nights per round. The first night was bad. Terribly, horribly busy. We would only have 4 staffs scheduled on night shifts. And we had 8 admissions that very night. One every hour until 5am.. And three of my patients needed IV plug, blood cultures and one needed to do lumbar puncture. Goodness. All three in a row. Never had i assisted in three blood cultures straight one after the other. A record for me 'cos even on morning/afternoon shifts, we don't normally assist in three at one go!

And on a side note, people who work in hospitals can be quite supersticious. As the House Officer was struggling to do clerking for all the new admissions (it just kept piling up for him! He'd start on one and another new patient will come in - we had alot of new casefiles sitting on top the other, on the table!), the Medical Officer came to help and she needed to review the new patients anyway. It was already at around 4a.m., and seeing that the H.O. has yet to bathe and change into his scrubs, she went "YOU DIDN'T BATHE?! IT'S YOU!!!! (pointing at him) 8 ADMISSIONS IS CRAZY! YOU STOP YOUR WORK AND GO BATHE! (motioning for him to go out of the ward) QUICK GO BATHE, AT LEAST SHOWER, PLEASE!"

Hahaha. He had quite a sheepish expression after the M.O. admonished him for not taking a shower! And heard from my colleague, he said "I better go and bathe before all of you start scolding me", he did hear both Seow Chee and I complaining that the night is crazily busy. At one part, (after his shower, haha, we were still complaining la), he looked at us and smiled embarrassly. Indeed the busiest i've ever had before, usually i'd be able to sit down by 1130pm and buy snacks from downstairs and eat, but we didn't couldn't sit down most of the shift. Only swallowed a sushi Seow Chee gave/shared with each us, gulp down a little of milk tea i bought earlier before continuing with work.

I did grab whatever chances i could to sit, when writing out reports/labelling specimen forms. But i was up at my feet most of the whole night.

When we came back for our 2nd night, Seow Chee, Kartina and I had the same expression, haha, we did not even want to walk into the ward. But thank God 2nd night was so much better.

However my body is aching from neck down now, even at my ankles!