the Brisk Walk

This day was the second day of my duty for our ICT training. The first day wasn’t much of a highlight because we just played as sponges observing all that’s currently happening in the tumultuous LMU and absorbing all the new information. Just so you know, LMU stands for La Milagrosa Unit. It’s the biggest unit in the hospital I’m currently in and also labeled as the most toxic area. Toxic, in nursing jargon, means you-will-never-have-a-chance-to-sit-down-on-yous-ass-because-there-will-always-be-too-much-things-to-do-so-don’t-forget-to-breathe.

For today, I didn’t just watch my senior do his stuff but I was to help him and accompany him to whatever he has to do. He was actually very good at what he was doing. I was overwhelmed with the pile of patient charts in front of him, and as he works through each of them, he makes specific calls to related departments either to ask about diagnostics or a need for reservation for the operating room. He zooms across the station getting the needed pile of documents while noting down doctor’s orders, while given a chance explains to me what he was trying to do, then noting things on the kardex and the charts. After much writing and discussing, he moves to prepare all the medicines for all his patients where he performs really quickly without any hesitations. Then he walks through the corridors of the huge unit, making it through each of the patients rooms accordingly  to give them their treatments, ask how the patients is, remind them if they need to fast for a surgery or they can’t void until they undergo a diagnostic procedure. These entire is not yet even the whole thing I went through.

The shift was a sprint. It was basically walking to and fro in the long halls of the hospital in a very fast pace and doing the tasks promptly like some sort of relay. I practically did the brisk walk a lot so as not to run in the hospital hallways making an impression that there’s someone coding. But whatever type of walking or pseudo-running I did, it resulted with ending up sleeping on my bed as soon as I get home and sleep-walking towards my confused cousin to whom I was half-consciously asking for food that didn't exist.