blind chicken boy

we in south africa have been making it easier to study medicine. after all medicine should not be restricted to the 'privileged' few who have more than 3 possible synapses in their brains. we are truly the country of opportunity.

however, this may not necessarily be a good thing for patients.

when i was in witbank, we had a house doctor who could possibly be the stupidest person without diagnosed mental retardation i know. and he was a doctor. we nicknamed him blind chicken boy after the brilliant nando's ad that i've posted here. when he tried to examine patients, sometimes we had to move him up to the patient, like the trainer in the video.

he is the only guy i know who admitted a patient with a glascow coma scale (gcs) score of zero. when the other house doctors took him aside and told him the lowest gcs you get is three, he retorted that his patient's was zero. end of story. i must give him credit although for also being the only house doctor who admitted a patient with a gcs of 18. once again, if 15 is the highest, i assume the patient with 18 was hyper aware. i immediately looked for him. i wanted to ask what the meaning of this life on this mortal coil is. i couldn't find him though.

a friend of mine was in orthopaedics clinic. blind chicken boy came in and stood sedately at the door. my friend continued with his patient. it was a guy that had been operated for a fracture and needed his stitches removed. once the stitches had been removed, my friend turned to blind chicken boy. blind chicken boy said,

"doctor, i have a problem." he began everything he said with these words.

"what is your problem?" asked my friend dutifully.

"the patient in the ward with the tibula fracture has changed condition." only blind chicken boy knew what a tibula was, but we all assumed it was a bone somewhere.

"how has he changed condition?" asked my friend.

"he has just stopped breathing."

so blind chicken boy, when he came across a patient who stopped breathing, he had the presence of mind to call his senior. it seems a pity that he slowly walked to his senior, leaving the patient alone and then waited for his senior to finish with the out patient that he was busy with. no one could accuse him of being rude and interrupting people who were busy.

there was the other story when another friend was on rounds with blind chicken boy. they found a patient who was not doing as well as expected. my friend barked out instructions. get a full blood count. admit in high care. give a bolus of 300ml ringers lactate. report back.

about 2 hours later, when everyone was beginning to wonder what had happened to blind chicken boy, he suddenly turned up.

"doctor, i have a problem."

"what is your problem?"

"i have been looking everywhere and i can't find a bag of 300ml ringers lactate. there are only 1 liter bags."