“Please
contact the telephone exchange to get Dr. Fiadjoe for me. Tell her it’s a case
of perforation of the stomach secondary to ingestion of a corrosive substance,
with massive intra-abdominal bleeding. Tell her I’ll start the operation while
I wait for her to come in.”
More
intravenous fluids were already been hung onto the drip stands, and the second
unit of blood was being warmed up.
Suddenly
the monitors started beeping.
We rushed
back to the bedside of the patient. The electrocardiograph tracing had
flatlined. Since he was still under mechanical ventilation, I just started
chest compressions.
“Get me
adrenaline!” shouted the anaesthetist. The matron scurried away, and after a
frantic search, had to rush to the theatre to get a vial of adrenaline.
I
continued working at the chest, compressing the chest at a regular rate.
After two
minutes, the tracing was still flatlining. The matron finally came back,
puffing like a beached whale. With an angry glance, the anaesthetist snatched
the vial away, drew the amount he needed and gave the shot of adrenaline
intravenously.
I continued working away on the chest
feverishly, sweat dripping down my face.
Three
minutes passed. The alarms were
still beeping. The Electrocardiograph tracing was still a line.
The
anaesthetist took a pen torch and examined the eyes of the patient. He shook
his head sadly.
“No use.
He’s dead.”
I stopped
the chest compressions, panting heavily, my eyes smarting from the sweat that
had gotten into them. Damn it, I
thought. After all the hard work?
“What a
way to die,” said the anaesthetist sadly. “You’re thinking it was a corrosive
substance that caused it eh?”
“Mhmmm” I
replied, nodding in agreement. “Why he would that to himself is amazing. There
are easier ways of killing yourself than swallowing such a substance!”
The anaesthetist
was already leaving.
“Not if it
was forced on him,” he replied over his shoulder.
I filled
out a post-mortem form quickly, and left the intensive care unit with the
bitter taste of defeat in my mouth. I didn’t sleep again till the sun rose.
No doctor
sleeps well after a death on his hands.
