First PEP - Days 4, 5, 6

Days fly by as usual. It's already day 6 and I'm wondering what I did on day 5. (I slept all day).

Day 4 - Monday, 30th April

I had general OPD duty. In essence I was jobless almost the entire day. I sat in the injection room and saw some 10 patients.

This morning I had tried to swallow the LPV/r without any water. It wasn't a very good idea as one of it got stuck to the throat and I almost had to do Heimlich on myself.

It's the day we went to Nugu and savoured garlic bread and churmuri prepared by all the ladies.

Busy kitchen at the ladies' place

Not conspicuous: Ram struggling with pepper powder in his eyes

On the way back Kishan & Suchitra ran out of petrol. So I had to empty a 1 litre bottle of water into my throat and fill petrol in it. Swathi and I went on a scooter ride after about an year today.

Day 5: May day

All I remember of this day is sleeping all day. I tried to get some useful work done after waking up in the evening. But having finished dinner, I slept again.

Ah, ah. I also sent an email to the canteen manager regarding the legality of "cooling charge".

Day 6: May 2, Wednesday

My first shift in the new ED. I spent half an hour with the new defibrillator. Skanray as they call it. Sankar Ray as I call it. Sliding out the adult pad for getting the paediatric paddles was the most interesting part. Still wondering whether the whole machine can act as an AED.

Only 3 cases came to the ED today. One of them was a lady in labour and I sent her straight to labour ward. The lady with fracture of leg? Straight to x-ray. The sad one was the man with MDR-TB, diabetes and cellulitis of a limb, had to send him to Mysore as well.

The computer network in the hospital was in partial disarray today thanks to the lightning and thunder last night. Oh, man! Yesterday there was a bolt of lightning and ear-deafening thunder right outside my window; I thought I died. One can only imagine how the poor electronics must have felt.

The thunderstorm is back tonight. I came to the hospital to finish this blog post as the power supply keeps getting disturbed in my room. And there it goes, another strike on the radio station above us. I sure will need an audiology check-up soon.

Earlier when I was in my bed, I felt my calf muscles ache. Myalgia is an early sign of acute HIV, you see. Had to brush up on the basics of acute infection. Also had to read three studies on the failure of PEP in health care workers. Seems like the right regimen wasn't chosen or there were adherence issues in most of the cases. I might also have been part of a world record by receiving PEP at around 15 minutes which I think is the earliest anyone has ever received PEP.

I might be having some minor reaction to the PEP as I feel abdominal discomfort (in the form of flatulence) and feel like the stools are coming out faster than usual. But apart from that, the pickle in the canteen is making me eat very well.