Horrible thing to say! Arrgh!

Alright, to my fellow colleagues out there, read investigation results to yourself and analyse them before blurting it out to a patient! Arrgh!

Well, it was last Monday. I was in surgery, and few minutes late as I got my rota time wrong! I was still in the common room chatting to my mates until I said to them I'm in surgery. They were like... aren't you supposed to be up there and ready by 1.15? Sh*te! So took off, went in to theatre and got change quickly. We were the lucky ones to be in surgery that day as it was probably not to be seen again ever in our Podiatric career! It was a 57 year old man presented with nail protruding from the 1st toe sideways. If you imagine someone with extra toe or finger, that kind of thing but instead of finger or toe, it's nail. Plus, it was not there in the first place. It started with an infected abscess, and we thought it probably gave access to the nail matrix for nail to grow.

Oh before that, whilst I was rushing through preparing myself for theatre, I was greeted by someone I had never seen before. A tall wide bodied gentleman. I was sheepish-ly smiling and made my way to the sink to do my social hand-washing. Whilst I was scrubbing, Matt was next to me.. as I asked him.. "Matt, is he the senior surgeon or something?" Matt replied "no no... he's the technician, he's replacing Lesley whilst she's in France". I said to Matt "Matt, you ruined it! I thought he's a surgeon and I was scared of him... and now you simply ruined that show!" hhahahah. And that reminds me of how I thought my Anatomy lectruer was the janitor on the first day! ahahha

Surgery went fine. But what fascinated all of use was, the HUGE chunk of nail that was in there!!!!! We called it the triplets delivery! We were just shocked! If only I could put up the pictures to show, but that would breach my duty of confidentiality!

In theatre, the phone kept on ringing. There were shortage of people in clinic to see patients. There were a few patients that had been waiting for at least 20 mins. After surgery, finished my notes and wrapped up, rushed down into clinic straight in my scrubs! Didn't bother to get changed. Plus I was in jeans if I hadn't worn the scrubs.

Got the 1st patient's notes, without even looking and pre-read, I called the patient. Patient sat down and had a quick chat why she was there to see me. Established the history, she enquired for her previous X-ray results.

Found it, and read the report. Within the first few lines, it stated that there was no signs of fracture.. bla bla... in response to the requested examination. However, as I read further, things just didn't go right. Worrying words to be heard by a 30 ish year old lady was really unpleasantly unexpected. First arthritis, which I justified, it said NO arthritis. Until the word "TUMOUR" came up!! I immediately went "WTH! and with a big bang in my head!". I had to reassure the patient that things were still under investigation and that the tumour was benign. Plus, I had to re-emphasise over and over again that medically we refer bumps and lumps as tumour. Had to call a senior lectruer to take over! Blimey!!! Never again that silly mistake!