My story
Unlike most medical students, I started my clinical posting as early as mid 1st semester 200level. Since it wasn’t official yet I went on random days and especially on Saturdays. My first weeks were fun as I stood mesmerized at simple procedures developed by humans like me to determine complex physiological activities going on in our body system. So I asked questions, jotted down information, read up its pathology, and so on until like Oliver twist, I wanted more. I was tired of just standing on the sidelines and watching others perform ‘miracle’ with just simple samples like blood, urine, and the rest but as a 200l student who isn’t supposed to even be on posting, I was denied such power. Well, I used that time to get acquainted with the scientist around me so I sometimes asked questions that I know the answers to just too engaged anyone at all, anyone to just talk to me. And after one month of watching, standing, jotting, and more watching I got tired and wanted to stop coming until I discovered the collection center.
So on horseback, I rode straight to the collection Centre, that’s where samples were collected. So I introduced myself and thanks to the kind scientist and technicians there who allowed me to learn. Now unlike most folks who learned sample collection by using other students during physio practicals, I learned using a live patient. The patient was an average aged man who was so understanding of my plight. After disturbing to try and collect blood I was allowed, immediately touched the syringe I began to shake like a woman in orgasm. I punctured this innocent man’s right hand almost 5times without successfully collecting anything but the man told me he too was once an apprentice and understood learning wasn’t easy, and so he refused the scientist to collect his sample and insist I did, he brought he left hand that I should try once more. He believed in me, I had to believe in myself too, so after puncturing this man more than 10times I finally got it right. That was my breakthrough. And after a month I became a ‘consultant’ phlebotomist in complex collection situations at NAUTH, not only collecting samples but also read up all I could on the prognostic diagnosis of the patient and compare it with the patient condition and follow up special cases. I wanted to be broad and balanced.
After that day, I became a frequenter of the lab, and then with time I became well known I was sometimes allowed to man benches especially during night calls, and this resolved my will to be better. Fast-forward a year later in my third year, while in the chemical pathology lab for posting my phone rang and it was one of my scientist friends who was calling me asking me to come to the hematology lab. When I met him, he was with a man I think was a relative to a patient, the man was quite disturbed and I became scared. The scientist asked me to follow this fellow to the ward. Well, I followed thinking it was to maybe collect something, I never knew it was to collect SOMETHING. On reaching the ward there stood a doctor, three nurses, and relatives with an old woman patient who seemed to be in distress. Ahh, what am I doing here? I asked myself. Without looking at me the doctor asked me to collect the sample of the woman that they all have tried but couldn’t. I asked for the woman’s form that was when they all stared at me like ‘who is this small boy’, are you the scientist they sent he asked, I said yes… they were still looking at me and I added student scientist. What do you need the form for he asked, I said to know the sample container to collect the blood into I replied. After looking at the form, she was an HIV patient who wanted a CD4 count test. I wore my gloves all the way praying not to mess my profession up. The woman’s skin was scaly, hard, and dry with no visible vein at all, God all eyes were on me, but I started counting 100 downwards to calm my nerves. With the little knowledge I had of anatomy, I estimated the position of her medial cubital vein in her cubital fossa, I had never done this before but I had to try something… and blindly I went in and boom at once I hit the vein as I felt its hollow chambers, I then drew the blood without stress, dispensed and smiled broadly. They all stared with awe while the relatives reigned thank you on me, well I was just doing my job I said.
The doctor approached me and we engaged in clinical discussions, me a 300l medlab student sharing ideas with a doctor, it changed my views of how the health sector was supposed to be but politics and power won’t allow people to enjoy this privilege. In the end, I suggested nerve deterioration as her muscles were weak and also to check her cardiogram and lung functionality as she was in respiratory distress which may have been caused by complications from HIV and he noted, I took the sample and left. My point is this, be diligent in whatever you find yourself doing, people are watching you I swear, you may not know it now but they are, and as the saying goes, when the going gets tough, only the tough gets going…. And by then you would be the tough one and people would have no choice but to seek you. Be confident, always ready to bend down and learn and most importantly respect authority and respect yourself.
