It finally happened; my clumsiness caught up with me and I did something sufficiently damaging to have myself become a patient at my own hospital.
Last Tuesday morning, in my haste to get to work in time for the morning teaching session, I managed to walk into a door... Now, you may be asking what exactly would be worth such an injury - right now, I can't even begin to remember, so clearly not all that exciting!
In reality, I didn't exactly
walk into the door - it was taken by a gust of wind and slammed into me but it sounds more amusing if I say I walked into it. Even more amusing still, my consultant suggested that I tell people I headbutted the last patient that refused to let me cannulate them. At the time, it was far from funny - the force of the impact was sufficient to both knock off my glasses and make me feel very very sick. I walk into stuff reasonably often (I actually broke a pair of specs doing a similar thing last year) but never do any real damage so I was more than a little surprised when I couldn't see out of my left eye and that there was a considerable amount of red stuff on the floor.
Being a practical chap, I picked myself up and had a slow wander over to A&E in the hope that someone there would be able to have a quick look and make sure I hadn't popped my eye out of its socket or anything equally ludicrous. Alas, despite the fact that the department appeared empty, the guys there refused to see me til I'd booked in with reception and had been triaged like the rest of the civillians! I felt like a real lemon when, standing there in surgical scrubs and with a hospital ID badge round my neck, the receptionist asked me what I did for a living.
Me: "I work here. I am, in fact, a doctor"
Reception Lady: <snigger> "Take a seat doctor and someone will see you shortly"
I'll give the department due credit though - I was seen pretty quickly and didn't have to wait once I'd been triaged. The FY2, who had covered nights with me just 2 months ago, did a thorough assessment and determined that my blindness was the result of a bit of peri-orbital oedema and the blood was coming from a laceration to the brow. Nothing too serious and certainly nothing that couldn't be fixed with ice, dermabond and some analgesia.
Check out the significantly improved peri-orbital oedema and not so neat glue jobJeez, that dermabond stuff stings though. It's like they're injecting your wound with red hot oil rather than sticking the edges together. It's also very messy and I ended up with rather a large blob on my eye lid that stung like hell when it was pulled off. The piece de resistance to this sorry show came in the form of "simple analgesia"... I informed them that I had a headache - nothing sinister, just the result of being smacked in the face by a heavy door but needing analgesia nonetheless. Rather than give me some paracetamol, I was given 60mg of Codeine! I've never taken opiates before and, bloody hell, they're horrible!
The dizziness was bad enough but when it was combined with vomiting, it was an unworkable situation. For the first time this year, I was sent home from work and told not to come back until I could stand up by myself... I think the consultant was also a little bit irritated by my disinhibited loudness but that may have been a side issue.
So, when all was done and dusted, I ended up looking like a bit of a thug and have lost a chunk of eyebrow. I'm reliably informed that eyebrows don't grow back in a quarter of people so I may end up looking like a 17 year old chav for the rest of my life. Ho hum.
Moral of this story? Don't walk into doors.