Napoleon In Rags

I'm tired.

The melancholy lies especially heavy upon my shoulder tonight.

I wanted to call this 'Snippets', but was worried about copyright infringement.

It may be a bit disjointed; I'm not sure what proportion of the jib / chat will be medical. You've been warned.

I have a rare dayshift tomorrow, and we're being visited by Healthcare Nazis. I believe I'll be expected to spout Party doctrine. I may lose my job tomorrow. Perhaps I'll be able to bite my tongue, but it won't help me spew the party slogans they have pasted all about me.

Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me...

I'm beginning to find myself in two minds about this blog. I still think it has the potential to allow me to vent my spleen, which is good for my psyche. But it seems to become less and less (semi) anonymous, and some of my more maudlin rants... Well I'm not sure people who know me should read them. I'm not sure people who don't WANT to...

Much was debated over at Dr Schwab's regarding what one should and should not post. I like Dr S. Granted, I don't actually know him, but he writes well, and his Internet persona reminds me of Pa Shroom. I suspect their professional experiences are as similar as they can be in two so very different Healthcare systems. They seem like similar surgeons, anyway. So I enjoy reading what he has to say, whatever the subject matter. Some readers feel he should restrict himself to medical matters. This seems blinkered to me. A person's opinion is worth hearing, whether you agree, whether they are an 'expert'; people's opinions are the lifeblood of a populus surely?

I don't know.

My professional life is still dominated by my disaster in the CT scanner. I need to get over it. It's hard. Seems to get harder.

She who was my beloved is going away. A grand shebang celebrates this fact tomorrow. I can't go. Work looms large again. I'm jealous of people who can go out on school nights.

Several of my colleagues, including one who I think of as a good friend, have fallen off the top of our training ladder. These are the first of the trainees who I worked with when I started. They were all ahead of me, but I enjoyed working with them, learned a lot from them, will miss them when they're gone.

I hate change.

I'm conscious of the lack of pictures of late. I will try to resolve this for what it is worth...

More reason for me to hate the arbitrary time based target under which I must labour: the two most satisfactory patient interactions I have had of late (desperate to do some good, to purge the CT scanner from my mind), have been simple cases that frightened the patient. Simple for me; life-changing for them. I could have left them in their uncertainty, in their moment of darkness. Someone else could have tidied up the edges.

But they didn't.

I did. Sat and talked to the patient. Held their hand. Explained what was going on. Did it again, and again for their partners; again in simple terms, with pictures, with actions. It doesn't matter how. My gift to them - my time, encased by, framed by the displeasure of my boss, and the management (fuck you, won't do what you tell me), because of how I was spending my time.

No-one else thinks so, but it was worth it.

Oh, and we had the drunkest girl in the WORLD in the Dept recently.

Funny old world, eh?