On the Empathy

It was the only time I saw something that really caught my attention in the accident and emergency department in the district hospital the entire month I was there. I mean, if it was not motor vehicle accidents, it was probably some fever or asthma. Well, there were some other cases alright, someone came in for chest pain, some with renal colic probably from stone, but this one really got me.

She was a Malay lady in her 6th decade old. When I first saw her, the medical assistants were all busy setting lines and getting her stable. So we took a look at her electrocardiogram sheets. She was having a heart attack. In any developed countries, as far as we were told by the cardiologist, percutaneous coronary intervention were performed. But us, well, we could only give the patients who presented early to the hospital with streptokinase, a form of drug to dissolve the clot that was blocking one of the vessels in the heart.

But that aside, what really moved me was, while she was having chest pain and difficulty in breathing, and she had all this face mask on, she had her hands all on her side being poked by the medical assistants trying to get the arterial blood for investigations. Arterial blood, I personally thought, was more painful to the patient as compared to venous blood drawing. The usual place where blood was drawn, the ones where blood donation was concerned, those were all venous blood. Arterial blood on the other hand, was taken where the doctors usually feel for the pulse.

So this patient, while there was one attempting to take from the right hand, there was another one trying on the left. As one of them failed, he moved on to the elbow area. And as the other side failed, they moved on to the hip. Finally when they succeeded in drawing a mere 2mls of arterial blood, they had already poked the needle into the lady like, 8 times or something.

I wouldn't doubt their skills, they're really skillful people, and we still learn from them. But I could only look at this lady in empathy. Her daughter was standing at the side looking at her mother being poked. I would've gone all limp if someone I cared so much for was in that situation. My heart ached the instance I tried to picture my loved ones on that bed. I'd rather be the one having the heart attack, really.

Alas, the lady stabilized. She was admitted to the ward for observation.