In this part, I will be sharing the unique experience I had during my short break from all the intensity of my previous rotation.
Let’s ride in…
DORA THE ADVENTURER
As usual, I was not sure if I wanted to travel or not. I was tired though and needed some free space to air out.
I finally made the decision to travel again for my short break.
Before then, I had a unique experience during my Paediatrics posting where I was opportune to volunteer in an outreach and also visit a natural tourist centre.
I did share more of this on my Instagram or YouTube but for the mean time I explained a little on a reel on my Instagram page.
Then I visited the beach where close to water, I gained deep memories and had release.
In these adventures with people I had come to care for and enjoy their company, I got some refreshing and release I believed was going to help me begin the next posting.
I prayed for a calm posting because honestly my previous posting drained me and using what I call the sunshine drop therapy, I was able to maintain a calm and smiling countenance.
Don’t worry, I may tell you about this therapy in a podcast
I completed my short holiday and headed back to base.
My next posting was medicine but what specific unit?
I will tell you if my fears were confirmed or if I managed to escape.
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I share a lot and if you check the menu button on this, you will see them easily displayed. However, a quicker link is here.
Welcome to the last part of this year’s edition of the blogster series.
If this is the first time you are reading, then the previous parts culminate to this post.
Also, there are podcasts attached to highlight the theme more.
Let’s ride in…
THE FUTURE
Do you know what your future holds?
Do you know?
The future is always ahead and as we come nearer to it, it gets broader.
The future is always ahead
The future is the dream we yearn to be in.
But do you we have an idea of what is in our future? Do we have a picture or a glimpse of it?
Have you gotten a revelation of what your future looks like?
Jesus had risen and the hope of the disciples had been revived, however, Jesus was not stopping there. There was a purpose for the hope He had revived and that hope was for a future that the disciples were to participate in.
The future of the disciples were to be the flaming torches that burned the world with the love of Christ. They were to take the message of Christ, the message of hope to all the corners of the world.
Before they could begin the future, they had to wait until the Holy Spirit empowered them for the mission that was in their future.
They could not go into their future by themselves because that future was one curated by God.
This brings me to ask: Who is planning your future?
Who?
Planning for the future is as imporant as getting into the future but then how do we prepare for it?
How?
God who gives us the dream of what our future looks like is able to guide us into it. However, if you don’t have an idea of what your future looks like, then you have to ask God.
God what does my future look like?
For those of us that are good at making plans for our lives, it will take extra patience to be patient and still seek God’s will for our lives. It is two sides of the coin, we cannot sit and fold our arms doing nothing, however we cannot plan our lives better than God.
We do this by surrendering our future to God.
God who holds our future knows how best it is for us to arrive into that future.
However, God is true and sure. He is faithful to the end. Amen.
There is a podcast version, listen here:
Click image to listen
Thank you for being here.
This is the end of Blogster 3.
Feel free to share your comments and share this post with others as well.
Posters used in this series were curated by me. I did not create the elements but I was able to tweak them to suite the message I wanted to pass across. I hope they pleased your eyes as they please mine.
I often think I can by first avoiding the pain but then the pain finds it way back.
Grief is very stinging. Its like squeezing lemons continuously into the sensitive eyes. Just at the space of relief, it comes back again.
There is no designated time frame for grief. Sometimes we never know how long we are supposed to grieve. Sometimes our hearts reach a point it accepts the reality of the grieving and allow healing to occur, other times the pain lingers for as long as.
In the story leading to the crucifixion, the disciples of Jesus were grieving.
It was dark moment yet they had to sit around the table and have passover wuth the man they had come to find their identity in.
Jesus gave them an identity and he was telling them he was going to die
They could not accept this reality and so they numbed it down and refused to acknowledge his words even though he repeatedly reminded them that he was going to die soon.
Is that not what we do? Deny painful realities?
Passionate Peter had declared ferociously “I will die with you!”. He then went further to carry a weapon to their usual private place where he used it on one of the servants who had come to arrest Jesus.
It was this same grief that made them sleep while Jesus prayed his heart out.
Luke 22: 44- 45 And being in agony [deeply distressed and anguished; almost to the point of death], He prayed more intently; and His [e]sweat became like drops of blood, falling down on the ground. 45 When He rose from prayer, He came to the disciples and found them sleeping from sorrow, (AMP)
Don’t we find ourselves tired when we are grieving? Our body aches and we have no energy to spare. We have spent our energies on the grieving process.
Now this grief can range from living to non-living.
From losing a person to death, to losing a precious relationship, to losing a job, to leaving a place, to missing an opportunity or experience, to misplacing a precious item, grief comes because we lose something we value.
You don’t grieve what is not precious to you.
Jesus was near them but it was as though He wasn’t because they were going to be separated from Him soon.
He was separated from them at the time of crucifixion. The one in who they had put their hopes in was dead and whatever aspirations they had died that day.
The grief they were all going through was sword piercing.
However, unlike them at that time Jesus is with us until the end of our lives.
To eternity, if we choose to be in eternity with Him
God’s word is true. He is near us in every season. In every kind of grief.
I pray we find the courage to hold God tight no matter the season we find ourselves.
Good or bad
There is a podacst version of this post.
Thank you for being here. Kindly share with others.
The neonatal ward was meant for neonates, the most fragile in all of the wards.
They needed to be handled with extra care and monitored as closely as possible.
And for me this reality meant less sleep.
I got attached to the babies I managed and would check up even when there was nothing I was supposed to be doing.
In managing these babies, we had the ones in intensive care; that is in the incubator and those who were put in a cot and for most of them, a regular blood sugar check was needed. Those in the incubator were the premature babies that needed to still complete their needed developmental period before they could be released out of it.
I had some unique experiences and I will share a bit of them.
When transfusing these babies, we needed to do it in what we call a Aliquot method and this needed intentionality. So on one of the nights, I needed to transfuse a neonate but the baby was too active and kept disrupting the procedure. A new line had to be set and yet the neonate’s arm in active movement kept tampering with the line and it frustrated me.
It was as early as 3am and I was still battling to complete the procedure. The child could not understand my frustration and we both were frustrated with the procedure. My eyes were with sleep and my body fatigued from leaning over and holding the child little arm. Gratefully, I was done and cleaned up to rest my head for only few hours.
Being on the neonatal ward call also meant we had to cover for special deliveries which included caesarian sections or neonatal emergencies that presented during call hours and that to added bulk to the load work as one’s presence could be demanded for in many places at the same time.
There were days that in the process of multitasking, some our routine work suffered. However, in the process I got to appreciate the resilience of some neonates with some of the least expected making remarkable improvements and recovering faster than expected.
Then there were the loses, some very painful as they showed often showed signs of being able to pull through.
The mothers of these little ones were heroes in my eyes. Most of them handled this very challenging period with grace and patience and sometimes when they became edgy, I could easily give them a break and offer comfort the way I could.
THE BURDEN OF PAIN
I will continue this part actively in the next part as this will be the most emotional section of this chapter.
I had been praised by my seniors for being diligent and patient despite the stress and demands I had been put through. I was feeling good about the compliments especially as I had a day to complete my posting in General Surgery.
It was my last day, I handed over properly to the house officers taking over, created a new flow chart for our patients and gave the pdf to my colleagues as well.
All things bright and beautiful
It was hours to calling it off and I found myself still doing extra work as I was called by seniors to assist with some responsibilities.
They asked kindly too
I still held on to as per “Let’s do it for the final day”
It was past 9pm and I left for home from the wards. I was not on call and I was nit expecting tp be called to the wards for anything.
However, by 11pm I got a call from the wards.
“Dr Agwu, there is apatient that is…” the line was breaking and i was sleepy so th ecaler cut the call.
The call came in again and I sleepily still recieved it “Hello?”
“Yes, there is a patient in respiratory distress”
“I am not the doctor on call”
“Well, call the person on call. I don’t have credit to keep calling” and the caller went off.
For context, the caller was the nurse on call in the wards.
She had mentioned female surgical ward but I heard male surgical ward.
My colleague that was on call was in the Accident and Emergency ward with the registrar and senior registrar.
I thought of the best way to to reach out to them knowing they were quite busy and so I chose to send the message on whatsapp which was where we used to pass most of our information and then I slept off.
I woke up by 5am to multiple calls and messages and they were not good.
Every nice words said had become a scold and a tug at the efforts I had put in.
At the end, I was almost given an extension if not for the pleas of some of my seniors who insisted that I had gone an extra mile on my last day and possibly was very tired.
I was dazzled by the sudden change of events, however, the lesson one of my senior reg said was “It is true it was your last day but next time a patient is in respiratory distress make sure you alarm as much people as possible. You don’t send a message and go to sleep”
I did not try to defend myself but apologized and thanked for the correction.
Summary they were able to see my message and went to see the patient who was then reviewed and stabilized.
This experience felt painful but I had no time to sulk on it and had to begin my new rotation. By the way there was no bad blood and despite this experience, I ended the unit amicably and still remained of my most interesting rotation in Surgery.
SLEEPLESS MACHINE
Okay……
My next rotation in surgery was in Neurosurgery. This was another dreaded unit with many unpleasant stories about the nature of calls and workload and here I was resuming the unit.
I met my favourite working colleague who had left general surgery before me. I was pleased because I loved working with her. Then another joined us on the same day. This unit rarely had enough house officers which made the work load in this unit exhausting, however with three people it was expected to be lighter than usual.
Interestingly, the notions I had gotten about the seniors in the unit was different from my experience. They were another of seniors that I worked so well with. I had no tension around them, I could ask questions and engage in conversations with them.
But
The stories about the workload were true.
The workload was enormous. The patients to see were in different wards aside the neurosurgery wards were our enough.
I had two weeks to spend in the unit but it felt like I spent one month.
I developed toe blisters from the amount of walks I had to do, I should have calculated my steps because it would have been quite significant.
There we often had cases in the accident and emergency on a daily bases with most of them needing surgeries and these surgeries often took almost the whole day. However, the unique part was that we were always expected to ne part of surgeries regardless of our calls and also surgeries could happen at anytime of the day.
When I say anytime, I said anytime
I had an experience where in the middle of the night without expecting a message I woke up by 1am to find out that we needed to prep a patient for surgery and that necessitated me leaving my home to join to return home by 6am and return to work by 8am for the usual ward round.
The surgeries almost became a daily basis routine. The patient prepping and follow up were required not forgetting the patients we had to monitor in the wards and in the ICU.
Gratefully, when we were not having surgeries, the calls were usually calm and I had the opportunity to go home and rest.
Two surgeries that stood out to me were:
A craniotomy to remove subdural hematoma and A C4 C5 360 decompression and instrumentation on account of solitary plascytoma.
We had multiple Ventricular peritoneal shunt insertions, and revisions.
In the rain, in the night the expectation to meet up with responsibilities were not exempted and despite the stress, I felt comforted because of the people I worked under.
Let me share one more experience in this rotation. Now we do casualty calls where we observe calls in the Accident and Emergency ward. I was on call on Friday/Saturday 12am to 8am and I was also on unit call on Saturday and rounds were to start by 8am and I was only allowed to leave the accident and energy ward by 8am. I reached out to my senior registrar and he allowed me time to join. Within 30 minutes I had reported for the rounds that was usual extended due to the volume of patient.
Reflecting back, it was interesting how I managed to cope but like I said the atmosphere was free of tension and the ability to laugh off the stress helped as well.
I had two more units to do and my posting in Surgery was going to be over.
I realized I did take not pictures while I was in Neurosurgery and I never took while I was in the theater, however, I complied some experiences on Instagram.
I did share that in the next part.
Curios to know the next two units I did?
Curious to know how I managed with stress during this time?
Until the next part which will be the final part of my surgery experience, stay safe and God bless.
I introduced this acronym last year via a podcast and I know I have not been active in sharing podcast with you in most of my blogposts as I usually did, you can always check for the most recent via the PODCAST page on this blog.
I shared the reason behind this acronym and the meaning it holds.
Simply click image to listen
I am in another season of my life and this will be the tag for now until another inspired word spring up.
Okay…that bring us to the end of this update. Thank you for reading until now.
If there is anything I should have learnt more in 2022, it ahould be gratitude
I have accepted that gratitude is a choice. I have to choose continually.
2022 was a year that taught me the power of gratitude and how healing it was in my growth as a person.
For the things we are not grateful for, we loose unknowingly.
In 2023, gratitude is still a key word and I trust God for the grace to remain grateful.
MORE RESOLUTIONS?
Is there a need for more resolutions?
Did you achieve the resolutions of 2022?
I am choosing to be kind with myself and I admit that I did not finish a lot on my list. I still have a lot of unfinished projects to complete and this year will be on completing them.
There will certainly be new resolutions added but the old ones will not be pushed aside because they are as important as the new ones that will come up.
SHARING
I am not quick to make any promises and I will confess that my head still needs a lot of clearing to do but this years, I really would love to share a lot of personal projects which are dear to my heart.
Some of them have taken years to develop and I hope this year would be the year to finally allow the world to see and access them.
I also hope to share myself with the right people and have God lead and guide my steps,
As I get older and the years come and go, I see the need to ever be jealous with my dreams and purpose and to trust my plans in God’s hands.
I hope to have you here
GOD’S WORD
The word of God has always been a watchword for me every year and this year is not different.
There is more for me in God and I am willing to harness that privilege.
Psalms 16:11 You will show me the path of life;
In Your presence is fullness of joy;
In Your right hand there are pleasures forevermore. (AMP)
I will seek God’s word more for my life and in all that I am doing.
I pray you do as well.
FOR TODAY
I began my day by creating a podcast, then I began writing this post earlier during the day then went to Church, had some warm times with others in Church. The had some calm moments with myself, after eating I decided to take a nap which lasted for good hours. I had some appointments which had to be postponed then returned to complete this post.
You can listen to the podcast here by clicking on the image:
The diary planners that were shared last year are still valid this year. You can get them via the shop section. Kindly scroll down to see them.
Thank you for being here and I hope to still have you as I keep sharing.
You can share with me via the comment section, I will be expecting your feedbacks.
This year, there was not a lot shared here. I did not have a better statistics compared to last year, and I did not post as frequent as I did especially towards the end of the year.
I had a lot of lessons this year and some of the lessons I learnt will be expressed in coming years, they have given me a reservoir of inspiration which by God’s grace will be harnessed in coming posts.
I learnt to forgive myself more. I learnt to explore more. I learnt to give myself a chance to be loved. I learnt to be and I am still learning.
Good things take time, I’ll be patient with myself.
By God’s grace, I will be sharing more personal projects in the coming months and if you would like to be part of the creative journey you may subscribe to my email list to do that with me.
You can always explore every other creative aspects via my menu.
Deeperlook 