My first On Call shift ever

On Tuesday I was first on call....which meant that I had a mobile that people could ring to call me in to deal with, well anything really....
Scared as all hell...no idea what to expect...I spent the afternoon rummaging around in the little resus bay trying to work out what where everything was, much to the amusement of the other nursing staff. "Chances are you'll never use that stuff lass, settle down!"
As may be, I felt a lot better once I had worked out how to turn on the oxygen cylinder and had located the emergency drug box and the airway stuff....so I calmed down a bit and decided to go out to dinner to the ARC, the local club, with one of the other nurses who had just arrived from another island, and as soon as we had ordered dinner, the phone rang.
"sister, my lil girl she got bad tooth spin, can u come? We at the clinic!"
So I hopped back in the can and drove back deserting my chops and chips and my dinner companion, to find a whole indigenous family at the clinic with an 11 year old girl sobbing quietly. The poor lass had had a Roth pulled the day before and now had a massively swollen jaw and a raging fever. As I was sitting at the computer looking up what antibiotics I could give her, the phone rang and it was the local first aid station letting me know they were bringing me in a lad who had stuck a glowing spear wire straight through his hand. I began to panic a bit and called my second on call, who also happens to be the clinic manager "Don't panic" he says, "I can see the ambulance from here so I'll come round when it arrives!"
So I go back to my poor patient and start the miserable process of getting the invariably used long acting penicillin suspension into her small buttocks. The holy CARPA manual tells me her meager 30kg put her in the adult dose category, which means 3.5ml of this evil glue like substance to be forced through a large bore needle into her muscle...
She cries, and I almost do too...and I send her home with Mum, grandma, a packet of panadol and the order to go to the clinic in their village for the next 4 days to go through the glue and needle torture all over again....
In the meantime the guy with the "spear wound" has arrived so I go next door to where my boss is already soaking his hand in diluted betadine....turns out its not a spear wound, but from a glowing wire he was using to make a small kids mud crab spear for a nephew....and it hasn't gone through his hand but instead dug a lovely tunnel from the base of his thumb up his forefinger.
His wife sits with him and speaks almost perfect English...I'm coming to deeply appreciate it when I can actually communicate clearly with my patients....I feel so helpless when I don't have the language to explain what is wrong and what I need to do!
The rest of the night brings both ambulance crews and various minor disasters, and the repeated expense that indigenous people Never come to the clinic alone...
I gradually get over my fear and panic of wandering back and forth alone through the dark from my little flat to the clinic, and being alone in its confusing corridors after the loud and chaotic mobs of wandering relatives and curious kids have been shooed out again and I'm trying to write some notes before the next lot arrive...
The serious asthma attack has actually been vomiting blood, so this time I call the doctor in.....but she goes home with some omeprazole tablets and the ever present panadol. The heart attack turns out to be what renal colic to my deep and grateful relief, and I finally crawl into bed at around 2 in the morning. The ambon crews were cheerful and helpful and offered to stay and help as long as I needed them...and my boss was very patient and supportive through my repeated panicky phone calls as well...and I'm beginning to realize that I actually do know how to deal with most things...and if I don't I can get back up. Maybe I can do this after all......


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