This dream starts in a hospital room which looks like one of the isolation rooms in our ICU. There is an obese patient lying in the bed and we are in the middle of trying to get a cannula in the patient. Anne, Jo and Hsiang are there and I am the team leader. I shout at them to concentrate on one arm each and the other person the legs - I cannot remember who goes to which part of the body, but everyone seems to be furiously trying to stick the patient with needles.
I look down and every attempt appears to be failing. Lots of the veins that look like veins turn out to have nothing in them, others just collapse and do not accommodate a cannula. There's blood oozing from multiple failed attempts, but the patient appears to be unconscious and he doesn't seem to mind.
"How long have we been going for now?" I ask and no one replies.
"Please get the IO gun as we will need it soon." I say to a random person standing at the entrance to the room.
I then take a cannula and try to put it in the external jugular vein, but I can't find it either. I toss the needle aside and just then, Anne shouts victoriously, "I've got it!"
The lights start flashing in the room and streamers come down from the ceiling.
"Congratulations", a microphone booms, "You have won the first phase of the difficult venous access competition."
That was a competition? I thought to myself. A bloody strange competition.
The next moment, we are all in a 4WD driving along a country road. My dad and another random old man in his 70s are also in the car. Hsiang is driving and I'm sitting in the passenger seat.
The countryside is full of lush green rolling hills, and looks not unlike the part going from Nowra to Kangaroo Valley. The air is fresh and we feel relaxed. The road surface deteriorates somewhat and soon we are bumping along a gravelly track. We come to a cave where it is very dark and Hsiang slows right down to navigate through the cave. I stick my hand out the window and feel that the roof of the cave is awfully close to the roof of the car. I tell him to navigate this way and that depending on the bumpiness I can feel, and we manage to inch through.
On the other side of the cave is a large mansion alongside the road, hidden by a row of carefully pruned pine trees. We stop the car and get out, somehow I realise at this point that we are looking for a treasure.
Inside there are three huge rooms, which feels strange as the outside appearance of the mansion would suggest there were dozens of rooms. In one room there are beds lined up one next to the other, somewhat resembling an orphanage. In the second room there are lots of old-looking bathtubs with clawfeet. The third room holds a variety of equipment and machines which I don't recognise.
I split up my team to look inside each of the rooms carefully, looking for any hidden crevices where treasure might be found. Looking around the house, I realise that there are almost no areas hidden to sight, and everything appears to be wide open. I feel like this might be a difficult task.
Eventually one of us (can't remember who) finds a secret trapdoor next to one of the bathtubs, its handle obscured by the clawfoot. We push the bathtub aside and pull up the door - inside there is a small crevice holding a chest. We lug the chest out of the hole, and with our hearts pounding hard, blow off the dust and open the chest.
Inside there are lots of old china plates and silver cutlery. I pick them up carefully and examine them - in the dream I think that they are real antiques, and I'm trying to tell what era they might be from. As I set each item aside, I get deeper and deeper into the chest until I find a handful of coins which look really really old. They have that rusted green look of excavated items, and with excitement I discern that the print on them says "Elizabeth I". I wonder when Elizabeth I reigned, but think that I've found the treasure.
Together we pull the chest out of the house and close the trapdoor. There are no other people around and we feel like we've found the treasure way ahead of the other teams. We load it into the 4WD and just as we are about to leave Hsiang says "I want to go home now, can I have my part of the prize first?" and Anne says "I know whose house it is, this is Rembrandt's country house. He planted that row of pines out the front."
With the engine running, Hsiang jumps out of the car and Anne runs off to take photos of the house. I feel like we need to get going because we should leave with the treasure before everyone comes, but another man comes out of nowhere and walks up to our car.
He says "Congratulations! Here is your prize." and hands a large bag to Hsiang. He looks inside and claps with glee.
We watch with much anticipation as he pulls out his prize. It is a 12 pack of Sorbent brand toilet paper.
Then I wake up.
I look down and every attempt appears to be failing. Lots of the veins that look like veins turn out to have nothing in them, others just collapse and do not accommodate a cannula. There's blood oozing from multiple failed attempts, but the patient appears to be unconscious and he doesn't seem to mind.
"How long have we been going for now?" I ask and no one replies.
"Please get the IO gun as we will need it soon." I say to a random person standing at the entrance to the room.
I then take a cannula and try to put it in the external jugular vein, but I can't find it either. I toss the needle aside and just then, Anne shouts victoriously, "I've got it!"
The lights start flashing in the room and streamers come down from the ceiling.
"Congratulations", a microphone booms, "You have won the first phase of the difficult venous access competition."
That was a competition? I thought to myself. A bloody strange competition.
The next moment, we are all in a 4WD driving along a country road. My dad and another random old man in his 70s are also in the car. Hsiang is driving and I'm sitting in the passenger seat.
The countryside is full of lush green rolling hills, and looks not unlike the part going from Nowra to Kangaroo Valley. The air is fresh and we feel relaxed. The road surface deteriorates somewhat and soon we are bumping along a gravelly track. We come to a cave where it is very dark and Hsiang slows right down to navigate through the cave. I stick my hand out the window and feel that the roof of the cave is awfully close to the roof of the car. I tell him to navigate this way and that depending on the bumpiness I can feel, and we manage to inch through.
On the other side of the cave is a large mansion alongside the road, hidden by a row of carefully pruned pine trees. We stop the car and get out, somehow I realise at this point that we are looking for a treasure.
Inside there are three huge rooms, which feels strange as the outside appearance of the mansion would suggest there were dozens of rooms. In one room there are beds lined up one next to the other, somewhat resembling an orphanage. In the second room there are lots of old-looking bathtubs with clawfeet. The third room holds a variety of equipment and machines which I don't recognise.
I split up my team to look inside each of the rooms carefully, looking for any hidden crevices where treasure might be found. Looking around the house, I realise that there are almost no areas hidden to sight, and everything appears to be wide open. I feel like this might be a difficult task.
Eventually one of us (can't remember who) finds a secret trapdoor next to one of the bathtubs, its handle obscured by the clawfoot. We push the bathtub aside and pull up the door - inside there is a small crevice holding a chest. We lug the chest out of the hole, and with our hearts pounding hard, blow off the dust and open the chest.
Inside there are lots of old china plates and silver cutlery. I pick them up carefully and examine them - in the dream I think that they are real antiques, and I'm trying to tell what era they might be from. As I set each item aside, I get deeper and deeper into the chest until I find a handful of coins which look really really old. They have that rusted green look of excavated items, and with excitement I discern that the print on them says "Elizabeth I". I wonder when Elizabeth I reigned, but think that I've found the treasure.
Together we pull the chest out of the house and close the trapdoor. There are no other people around and we feel like we've found the treasure way ahead of the other teams. We load it into the 4WD and just as we are about to leave Hsiang says "I want to go home now, can I have my part of the prize first?" and Anne says "I know whose house it is, this is Rembrandt's country house. He planted that row of pines out the front."
With the engine running, Hsiang jumps out of the car and Anne runs off to take photos of the house. I feel like we need to get going because we should leave with the treasure before everyone comes, but another man comes out of nowhere and walks up to our car.
He says "Congratulations! Here is your prize." and hands a large bag to Hsiang. He looks inside and claps with glee.
We watch with much anticipation as he pulls out his prize. It is a 12 pack of Sorbent brand toilet paper.
Then I wake up.
