Another Pair Of Eyes

Digging

When you tidy your room you never know what you might find. Found before I left, old thoughts.

NZ

Today I am off to New Zealand and will not return to these shores until October. Been a few occurrences since the last post – I’ve passed my exams, and broken my arm. I’ve done something to my feet, and cannot easily walk. I am pissed off, upset, frustrated, and the excitement of the upcoming weeks is freshly tainted with dread. And I don’t particularly want to talk about it. There’s a lot to this and a great deal of thoughts either way but the upshot is as follows:

• I’m still going to New Zealand. Stop me at your own peril.
• I’m going to have to make some fast friends in the orthopaedics department.
• The airport, and the walking through it, is really going to hurt.
• Research says I may be able to get the cast off soon. I have an unusual fracture that may well require early mobilisation to prevent permanent loss of movement.
• My feet will hopefully recover within a week. If they don’t then they too are fractured, which would mean that there is something other going on.
• The latter scenario is very unlikely.

Basically, nothing is going to plan but I’m hoping that things resolve. I’d write more but typing isn’t the smooth interface you’d hope it to be with one arm out of commission – a lot of things become surprisingly difficult. Wish me luck everyone, because at this rate I’m really going to need it.

Propoganda

I find this rather disturbing. Read: very disturbing. It’s trying to effectively indoctrinate a generation to think how conservative religious Texans believe they should think, and frankly that is a serious concern. To present ideas to a group of adults who can mull things over is fine, but to teach it to children who don’t know enough to question and without presenting the other side of the argument properly I think is criminal.

And the last thing that the US needs right now is religion messing with its constitution, expansion on its already-rampant isolationist tendencies by scaremongering about the UN, and indoctrinating children with ideas how ‘American ideals benefit the world’.

What kids need is to be taught how to think, not what to think.

Fiction

I’ve not read a book in a long time. Far too long, in fact. The last two years have yielded only a smattering of literary opportunities (even for the dubious merits of Ken Follet-esque novels) and, frankly, I’d begun to forget to bother to try. Why start a book when there is only half an hour before you go to bed? More insidious still, why start a book and read for pleasure when there is important reading to be done in the sixth edition of Clinical Medicine? There was no time for these silly fancies, and realistically there still isn’t.

I was on amazon the other day, and I was ordering a new external HD to take over the storage of the various media permeating my unfortunately-stuffed 500GB one. On the spur of the moment I also saw that in my recommendations was a new book from an author I’d enjoyed in a previous life, so I ordered it. Hardback, sure, but somehow stuff doesn’t seem as expensive when you order it alongside something that costs a pretty penny already.

It arrived yesterday. I started it this morning, and finished it 5 hours later on the dot, having evidently underestimated the vociferous nature of my appetite for the written word.* A few years of fictional starvation (think about it…) can do wonders for your tolerance for that slight neckache associated with a not-quite-perfect posture as well.

Unfortunately, I fear that shall be the extent of my bookish wanderings for the time being as I need to delve back into the grimoires of my course rather than those more deserving of the grimoire definition. Still, it is good to be reminded, and perhaps I shall be more cautious about watching a film or a TV programme when I might instead fold myself into some contorted shape to cast some light on a good book.

I think forgetting to read caused me to forget how to play with words.

*however, I was shocked to find that my reading speed had dropped off somewhat to a rather paltry 100 pages an hour. Not, of course, that a figure can be put to the infinitely variable page and font sizes with any degree of reliability.

eCheque

Turns out, an eCheque is one of the slowest ways of paying for anything, ever. It would have been quicker to post a physical cheque. Anyway, blog is back up now, my  apologies.

I use my web hosted space for a number of things so continuing it was a given, but I will admit to wondering if this blog should remain. I don’t often feel I have much to say here, and when I do I tend to write half a post and have it sit in my drafts folder and decompose until it is no longer relevant. Ever think there is a lack of substance to my posts or that they simply don’t arrive for a long time? Well that’s why. I don’t really want to turn this blog over to being just about medicine either, as I know that doesn’t interest basically all of you, but it is kind of the definition of my life particularly at this time of my course as the end-of-year storm clouds begin to gather on the horizon. For now, you may have to accept that some of my posts won’t be very good, or frequent, or a combination of the two. Once I get a hold of what direction I want to take I’ll let y’all know…

’til then.

Pauses

You may have noticed I’m not here so frequently as I might have been before. The workload is stacking up rapidly – I’ve taken today off from placement to finish my essay and a bunch of cardio notes, and been up since half six doing the same. Day off, pffft.

Not, you understand, that I’m complaining. The more I learn the more elegant everything is, and the more I can link things together, understand the consequences of things and the cascade of consequences consequent of those consequences. Why can alcoholic liver disease cause catastrophic haemorrhage in the throat, or swelling in the ankles, or rupture of the spleen, or kidney failure?* I know I’m endlessly banging on about medicine but it’s increasingly an integral part of my identity, for better or for worse. Probably for worse, but hey – in some ways it changes me for the better. Currently I’m on a one-week-on one-week-off routine in sync with Helpful Teaching Consultant’s morning ward rounds. Next week it’s back to Dr. See-no-students-hear-no-students so I’ll revert back to going to a bunch of random stuff, neuro and GI and endocrine and phleb clinic, if I can swing it.

We’ve got some new neighbours, postgrad nurses-to-be; in number, three. We were worried first that there was a family moving in, but they were just the landlords. As of last Sunday we are officially surrounded by students on both sides, which is good news. And we invited them over for cocktails, and they are pretty chilled out, which is nice. That, the discreetly unmentioned valentine’s day and a couple of sunny days and nights with sleep in have cheered me no end, life is better again.

Now, I need to crack on with my essay. It’s a bit of a strange reflection that I want to finish this essay so that I am finally free for the remainder of the year to get down to working on medicine proper. Who’d've thought that the homework-hating me of yesteryear would become so driven…

Essaytime.

*don’t get alcoholic liver disease, kids.

Stalling

I watched an episode of scrubs once and during the episode, Dr. Cox came out with a phrase (the exact wording of which I cannot remember).

“Everything you do in medicine is a stall.”

And it is. Every disease you treat, every symptom you manage, every wound you stitch or tumour you excise; it’s all just stalling for time. It’s a pessimistic viewpoint, but the universal truth is that everyone stops bleeding one way or another. Fight as hard as you like, but in the grand scheme of things you lose. The bigger picture is a grim one.

The other day on the ward, a patient arrested. Staff performed CPR, successfully, and he was resuscitated. Three hours later, despite the best efforts of everyone involved, he died.

At first glance, we lose, death wins, but there is one more thing to this story. Three hours was long enough for his daughter to come and see him, talk to him, say goodbye to him. Before that I kind of agreed with Dr Cox, but actually sometimes, despite the worst, we still pull some semblance of victory from the jaws of defeat.

And I think that’s enough.

It’s not always about the bigger picture.