Of mice and medicine

A quick look inside the mice crisis at the Royal Melbourne Hospital

Last week, I wrote about the one-star Google reviews that grace our public hospitals in Australia. Of particular concern were the number of reviews mentioning an invasion of mice at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. In the foyer, in the medical wards, in the mental health unit and beyond. All seem to be plagued by sightings of furry friends scurrying across the floors and even furniture.

“While typing this the mouse has traversed into a few of the rooms, into the dining area, in front of a nurse who didn’t even seem phased and is now sitting under a vending machine that no longer works,” one review stated.

I shared this and a flood of stories from doctors, nurses and allied health workers subsequently arrived at my inbox. There were pictures of one registrar holding a mouse in a plastic bag, having just caught it with their bare hands. Others reported teams having named their resident mouse. There were multiple mentions of a mouse called Mickey that roamed (or perhaps still roams) the hospital, or maybe it was several mice with the same name.

And before we go on: yes, yes, I know there’s also an outbreak at the Alfred Hospital, and I’m aware this is very Melbourne-centric, but it’s much easier to pay attention to just one thing than an entire country of things.

So what exactly is going on?

Well, reports date back to almost 10 years ago, when mice were first spotted and even at that stage, the staff appeared unperturbed by their existence. It appears that hospital executives tried to explain the mouse problem by pointing to the construction of the Peter MacCallum centre next door which displaced a nation of mice that had been living underground. These days, the explanation appears to be the building of Melbourne’s ill-fated Metro Tunnel underneath the Parkville hospital precinct. What’s next: seismic activity? A particularly heavy-footed outpatient stirring up rodents under Royal Parade? Dan Andrews falling down the stairs at his holiday home in 2021?

Patient sightings proved particularly alarming and were reported in the media for a while.

But in reality, the mice appeared to be mostly concentrated on areas of food and shelter: hence, doctors offices and tearooms.

And what’s the hospital’s solution? Clean up your own goddamn mess, they say!

“In 2017 I was a final year med student and they banned food in the theatres due to the mice.”

A recent email from the hospital administration was forwarded to me.

Workers are left to desperate measures to try and enact their own method of pest control in the meantime.

Potentially inhumane treatment of animals aside - there’s definitely something strange going on here. Are these mice even street mice? Could they actually be escaped experiment subjects from the Peter Doherty institute, juiced up on some novel herpes treatment? Is this going to be a Planet of the Apes situation? In a thousand years time will one of us be looking at a dilapidated Eureka Tower half sunk into sand, yelling “Damn you all to hell!” to an army of technologically advanced speaking mice?

Anyway…

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It was in the same week I was looking into this that I contracted some sort of bronchopneumonia, and was off work for a week.

In my fever dream I imagined a mouse, raised on medical TV dramas who is swept up in a giant flood from… er… Shepparton. He is sucked into a storm drain which takes him to the city of Melbourne. Frightened and alone, he scurries across the rooftops of Parkville. One night he sits atop a skylight to an operating theatre, dreaming of performing surgeries like those he’s seen on TV.

At the same time, a young, fresh-faced surgical registrar has arrived in the big city and takes up his first unaccredited job at the RMH. The mouse somehow finds his way into the operating theatre by mistake just as the young surgical hopeful is making their first incision. The nearly-botched cholecystectomy is fixed just in time while no one is looking by the mouse’s incredible talent. The young surgical registrar strikes up a deal with the mouse, whereby the mouse and doctor will act as one. The mouse hides in the registrar’s hair, pulling on tufts to direct their movements while operating, concealed by a large bouffant cap. The rest of the theatre staff are impressed by the registrar’s performance, but this arouses suspicion from the consultant. Much tension ensues as the registrar struggles to hide their furry friend atop their cranium. They live together in a tiny apartment in Docklands with a view of the West Gate Bridge. As accreditation for the RMH approaches, all hands are on deck to make sure the hospital survives another year after a litany of regrettable transgressions in the surgical department. The hospital had notoriously lost its two-star Google review rating in the last accreditation cycle to become a one-star hospital. Observing the surgical registrar’s outstanding performance in theatre (incising a perianal abscess with such aplomb), the inspectors agree to accredit the hospital for another three years. The day is saved.

I wake up and realise I’ve just rewritten the 2007 Pixar film, Ratatouille. As I slip in and out of consciousness, I think I can hear a little squeak behind my headboard.

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