Friday, November 09, 2007

Vasovagal syncope

I only spent 2 hours at work today.

This morning, I went to work determined as i was not on-call or post-call. Plus, I had a good break yesterday as it was Deepavali Day and spent it by watching a movie with my sister.

The drama started when a baby in the NICU was desaturating despite positive pressure ventilation. Turns out the endotracheal tube was not in place and my specialist had to re-intubate the baby again. I was there assisting her, giving the cricoid pressure, and my specialist was having difficulty localising the vocal cords. It was clearly a difficult intubation.

Another friend of mine came to the scene, and she asked what was going on. I briefly explained to her.

After a few attempts, she instructed my collegue to assist her instead while ignoring me completely. The stress came to me, and my mind was boggling. Am I a poor assistant? Am I bringing her bad luck? I was being paranoid.

With my collegue being her assistant, she managed to intubate the baby successfully and the baby's saturation picked up. While the nurses was helping her to anchor the tube, the specialist told me - 'You should not speak when someone is intubating.'

It felt like a slap on the face. I know it was a simple comment but it hit me really hard. That was when i started having the symptoms; my head was spinning and I was feeling light. I tried to distract myself by reading the patient's file together with my collegue.

As I was doing that, I suddenly felt nauseous and the giddiness became worse. I quickly ran to the bathroom, thinking that I would vomit. I started having cold sweats; grabbed the sink, trying not to faint. I was really scared.

I immediately sat down on the nearby sofa, hyperventilating, trying to figure out what was happening to me. Thought I had a hypoglycaemic attack, but when the nurse checked by capillary sugar level it was 4.6mmol/L.

My specialist came to see me, and when she saw I was sweating away and looking pale, she instructed me to go home and have a rest. Plus, I'm gonna be on-call tomorrow.

I didn't think I was fit to drive, so I called up my brother and he came to pick me up from the hospital.


At this moment, I'm still figuring out what actually happened to me today. My guess is that I had a vasovagal attack, triggered by stress.

It worries me as my paranoia is becoming worse day by day. I can't even take a simple criticism and I always feel that people are against me. I need to learn to be more thick-skinned and take people's remark in a positive manner to improve myself.

Will I ever learn?

3 comments:

Iron Butterfly said...

hey I didn't know that you can be paranoid... you've always been calm and collected. Unlike me, kalau pretend to be calm pon, kat dalam mesti seething.. Hahahaha..

Putri Z. said...

Tu la pasal, i never really had this when i was a houseman. i guess it's because i know people are expecting a lot from me now,and i push myself really hard to reach their expectations. sometimes, i just need to realise that life can never be so perfect.

Iron Butterfly said...

i used to succumb to expectations, now I couldn't be bothered. Life is much easier that way. Hahaha..