Lonely calls

And so I’ve survived another call.

I can’t help reflecting in my post call state that doing calls here is really very very depressing and lonely, I always find myself in a grumpy mood everytime I’m on call.

Previously, for GS HO1 calls, I’m almost always in a cheerful mood, because I find GS active calls are quite fun, that is, before the cases start piling up.

I start my call joking with the nurses and scolding them for calling me for new cases at 9am in the morning, and then groan loudly in the later part of the day, “why liddat??!!! The cases just don’t stop!” and the nurses would say, “yar you always so suay one”
And at around 3-4am while hanging out at my favourite ward 16 where the nurses feed you with food and gossip (once on a particularly bad call, one of them even made me tea), I can always bump into the active Orthopod and we would trade stories while furiously making the list. Invariably my HO1 calls always clash with D or Mc’s and the nice guys have more than once offered to help me with my bloods. So nice the feeling of helping each other out.

Even with the Orthopods I don’t really know, you can always strike up a conversation to brighten up your call, like:
Me: Hey, did you hear abt the mass cas with the overturned lorry of bangalas?
E: Yes! I got one of them.
Me: Hey I got the driver. Do you know if any more are coming up?
E: My guy told me the rest went home. Phew!

My overturned lorry of bangalas is a classic story, I told everyone abt it.

It first began with how one day both me and my MO was on call on another team’s take, and he was laughing at how many new cases they have already. I scolded him, “don’t say that! We’re on take this fri, will have retribution one!”
MO: “nvm wat, I’m on leave, may you get a lorry full of bangalas come in on you.!”
Apparently that’s his fav curse and he has been saying that for eons.

So suay suay it was raining on my call day and the A&E Reg casually mentioned to me that there is a mass casualty coming in.
I frantically asked the A&E nurses for any gossip and they told me it was an overturned lorry load of bangalas.
“Huh!!!!” I wailed desolately. This was when I was already in the CT room, so naturally the nurse and the radiographers happily shared stories abt their experiences with mass cas involving bangalas and creative ways to tell them apart while I just marveled at my luck.
After I returned to the A&E, I heard the P2 room fill with bangalas who were erm…all rather vocal with their distress -_-“

I told everyone in the wards that a lorry full of bangalas overturned on me. Ph, cos he’s my teammate, patted me on the back consolingly, E (my other teammate) uttered his usual curse of “si mi lao gao!” And EVERYONE ELSE whom I told the story to laughed loudly and prolongedly.
Heng heng only got 9 bangalas, I later found out. An orthopod meanly said, “maybe it’s a lorry of 9 which collided with a bus of 30.” -_-“

Even that MO who was on leave found out abt it cos when he came back the first thing he did was to laugh at me abt it. Turned out my con was so excited abt the case he actually immediately put in on his facebk.

Sigh!

I miss those days!