Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Take A Little While To Grow Your Brother's Hair

Pure nostalgia tonight.

My experience of blogging strikes me as odd. While the process of writing is cathartic (although you could argue I could achieve the same thing by actuall talking to people), I have found myself inevitably drawn into the Blogging community.

I start to wonder who is reading this nonsense, and of course, I've started reading other peoples blogs. There are millions out there, so I'm sure I'm missing millions of great blogs; but those that I do read attract my attention, smetimes because they comment on my blog, sometimes because someone else recommends them.

Anyway, those that I try to read regularly I find well written to a fault, and all have something worth saying. Many of them express sentiments that I share much more eloquently than I could ever hope to. Variety is the spice of life, I guess. Like good books, these blogs can start to feel a bit like old friends.
Or new friends;
or whatever.

The point I'm rambling toward is that sometimes these folks go missing. Everyone has they're own reasons for not posting. None among us are doing this professionally, as far as I can gather, so life gets in the way. But... you can't help but wonder. Part altruism (are they o.k?) part selfish (I was reading that!)

Well, a couple of the blogs I follow had been silent for a while, and are now going again. Which is nice. I'm glad you're both posting again. Welcome back, for what it's worth.

I was watching an episode of TV Medical soap Holby City tonight. (If you're not aware of it, think Chicago Hope; if that doesn't help, then Nuts to you.) The entire episode was set during the late / night shift. It made me quite nostalgic for nights on call, if you can believe it. Then a number of glaring technical errors became apparant to me, and rage became my dominant emotion. I've self medicated with alcohol, though, so it's ok.

It does bring me to my own peculiar rose tinted specs. Hard and sometimes frightening as my nights on call were, I now look back on them with fondness, both as times when I was happy, and as a macho badge of homour. (I've been prone to use "In my day..." - type aphorisms since I finished my Pre-Reg year. (And, yes, I know, I'm an arse. But thanks, anyway.)) It makes me wonder, though... was it really any beter? The prevailing wind in medical politics at the mo' is that things are worse now than they were a few years ago.

This isn't quite the same thing. There is no doubt in my mind that that Bitch Hewitt has fucked the NHS royally. But it has pretty much been the aim of every Govt since 1948 to break the power of the medical profession. As to the idea that Doctors earn too much, I say Bollocks. Yes, we earn good money, but compare the amount a surgeon gets* for removing your cancerous intestine, and potentially saving your life with the fee a Solicitor gets for conveyancing your house.

They started it.

Nye Bevin promised to choke our throats with gold, and no-one stopped to think that good Health Care would become increasingly burdened, no less so.

I did have a point to make. I'll try to come back to it when I can think straight.

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*(about 600 quid in Pa Shroom's day ( I know the bill will be more than that, but 600 is the suregeon's fee, and it includes all the post op care while your in hospital, which might be two weeks.)

2 comments:

Indian Medic said...

Yeah Dr. Shroom, I totally get it when u say ‘Writing is cathartic.’
I have just been a month in the blogging world and I realize I have just found the tip of the proverbial iceberg. But trying to keep up with all the blogs is a tough task, so I find myself limiting myself to a handful medical blogs.

Bo... said...

What I've discovered about myself from blogging is that I "think in my head" a lot more descriptively than I am able to write. My thoughts always seem so dramatic and detailed---but when I try to put them down in the blog, I flounder, and everything seems to come out wooden or stilted. I would give anything if I had the gift of written language like my idol, Pat Conroy.