The spectre of dementia appears to be a constant presence as I get older. At least, I think it’s dementia – I’m having a little trouble recognising things lately.
A couple of weeks ago I finished a very long case, and as I was walking out of the building I spotted someone on the stairs I recognised – the husband of our patient. Aren’t you going to pop into ICU to see her? I said, and kindly offered to show him in myself. He turned back around and I took him through the swipe doors into ICU, announcing loudly to the nurses there that I’d brought the husband through to see his wife. Suddenly the man waved me over in a bit of a panic – I’m not her husband! He said, and I thought Oh, are they not married? Would he rather I said ‘partner’, which seemed a strange thing to take issue with at such a time. But no. It turns out he was the theatre nurse, that I’d just spent the whole afternoon with, along with the rest of the team looking after this same patient. “I know we middle aged white men all look the same, but still…” he took it pretty well, and the ICU nurses certainly found it very amusing.
I thought no more about it, and then today I was drawing up my anaesthetic medications in theatre when a bossy ward nurse came in to say “You need to come and sign the anaesthetic consent!”, which annoyed me rather. As I always say, it’s not just the signature you need, it’s the whole consent procedure that’s important. The patient and I had already had a long phone conversation the day before, and of course I knew we needed to talk more and get the written stuff out of the way – but I needed to get my medications ready, and it’s a dangerous time to distract an anaesthetist. Not that the anaesthetist themself presents a risk (unless they’re having a really bad day), but it does make it more likely that we’ll make a drug error, which we like to avoid as much as possible. Can you imagine being given a muscle relaxant drug (that paralyses you) instead of a gentle sedative or painkiller? Not nice and it can happen if the syringes get mixed up. Anyway, I continued with what I was doing, then went to talk to the patient and we got on with things.
Some time later I was chatting to the theatre nurse, and I mentioned this very rude ward nurse. There was a pause in the conversation, and too late I understood the frantic signals the scrub nurse was trying to send me with her eyes. The rude nurse was actually the theatre nurse that I was talking to. I had thought it was a completely different person. Well of course I tried unavailingly to rescue the situation by making friendly chit chat, but the whole thing was excruciating.
The annoying thing is, I usually pride myself on my ability to recognise people. I have regularly sneered at my husband over the years when he tries to identify actors on TV that I have no difficulty in naming. I’m just trying to hold onto the fact that two isolated events don’t yet make a pattern, but I’d better do better in future or I may well be diagnosed with prosopagnosia (face blindness) myself. Although apparently Brad Pitt has it and it hasn’t exactly held him back, has it?
