This week is my last week in Hospital KL and my first in ICU (intensive care unit). Starting nice and early I popped across the road to Traveller's Palm Hostel for breakfast before catching the monorail to Chow Kit. A familiar walk later and I arrived, thankfully on time, to the intensive care ward. With two wings and 30 beds ICU here is no small deal. Handover starts a 8 in the conference room where each wing discusses all the patients under their care for the day as well as potential arrivals and hopeful discharges.

Starting in the old wing I spent the day shadowing anaesthetists dealing with necrotising facitis, dengue shock syndrome, diabetic ketone acidosis, meningitis, AAA, and status eplilepticus to name a few. Here everything is computerised (expect x-ray which are still good old fashion films) and daily logs are written by the attending doctors and vitals are updated regularly by the nurses. But since the rest of the hospital isn't quite as technologically advanced everything has to be printed out when a patient is discharged back to the wards.

I have found ICU involves three main things: 1. Investigating: working out why someone is ill and what can be done. 2. Practical procedures: tracheotomies, intubations, setting lines etc. 3. Paperwork: in this case a lot of typing things up.

A second handover happens around 2 which is more traditional in the sense that everyone goes from bed to bed as the consultant sees each patient in turn. This was the most useful for understanding investigations, treatment and prognosis as the doctors tended to get a good grilling from the consultant.

After a busy day I rang Fairoz on the way home and found she had skived work and was at home. I took a detour via a bank and supermarket and headed for her apartment. It was nice to sit, chat and catch up after the weekend away. She was cooking for dinner that night and come sunset we all tucked into a delicious meal that left me stuffed as usual.

Wanting to get home before it got too late her brothers (as her other brother Samuel had arrived over the weekend) walked me to the monorail and I headed home through the busy night markets of Buckit Bintang.