Death roughs us all up, sooner or later. My first round with death was as a twenty year old. I remember staring at my sister’s lifeless, broken body, neatly propped together and lovingly tucked into her coffin, ready to descend to her final resting place. She had fallen down a frozen waterfall and landed facedown […]
One morning, a schoolgirl was brought to the rooms by several teachers from a local school, whispering amongst themselves about her being bewitched. Without any warning, ten-year-old Sindiswa Dama behaved very oddly and out of character. She started making faces, sticking out her tongue, smiling and grimacing at the other children, frightening them. When the […]
A day in an emergency unit cannot be predicted or accurately planned for. Some days the patients come in at reasonable intervals and I feel a sense of calm and control, and other days it feels as though a bus has picked up all the sick patients in Johannesburg and dropped them off in our […]
Two tearful middle-aged women rushed into the rooms. They had just been hijacked in broad daylight, in one of Johannesburg’s leafy suburbs. It happened shortly after the one woman had dropped her dog off at her friend’s house for a play date. As she was about to reverse out the driveway, a vehicle cornered her […]
This case is seared in my memory, and it has woken me up at night, on occasion, in a cold sweat. It too has its own magic. A 50 year old man came rushing into the rooms, saying he wanted an injection for his headache, which had come on suddenly. He was between meetings, and needed to […]
Our practice has a shop-like roller shutter door. We arrive early each day, to prepare the department, attend our 15-minute bullet meeting and to indulge in a quick coffee, before the rush of the day. It has become a ritual to watch the door as it rolls up, at opening time, every morning. It marks […]
Mrs Griswold, not her real name, a school teacher in her early thirties, rushed into the rooms, sweating and groaning in abdominal pain. She knew what was wrong with her. It was constipation, an ailment that plagued her repeatedly, and she knew the solution, an enema. As soon as possible. She was in excruciating pain. […]
Who am I? My name is Dr Nicola Vosloo. I am a medical practitioner, in practice for the last 28 years, mostly in Urgent Care. Swift Care Clinic is my medical practice, which I work in and manage, located in Johannesburg, South Africa. The largest segment of patients we see are Urgent Care patients. We also […]
