Inspired by the mandatory health and well-being session

Holiday time!
Those of you who have suffered along with my blags might recall I used to liken life to jamming a pentagon in to a box. The pentagon being you (and the five key aspects of your life) and the box being your ability to keep things under control. No matter how much you try to rotate the jolly pentagon there's always a corner sticking out - something always needs to be addressed. Or at least that's how I've felt in the past.

Right now I feel as though I need a bigger box! Either that or my capacity to keep things under control has been subdivided in to a triangle.

Suffice to say, I did pretty mediocrely in the practice osces on wednesday. My lack of exposure to some areas caught me out.

Oh well.

No sir, no dancing today.

I've written the last couple blags on the phone. Hence the jitteryness. But it's nice to do some writing before falling asleep. I must have had helicopters on mind though, because I was pretty sure I woke to the sound of a helicopter landing at about three AM. Another retrieval. Nah, two in one day is pretty rare.

Turned out in an awkward twist of fate that the on-call doctor had become quite unwell and had to be choppered out (albeit doing okay after some emergency surgery.) But everyone was very concerned at work today. And it threw the whole day in to chaos for the patients of course. Such is life!

Pretty crazy stuff though, I know how much doctors hate being patients. I certainly never want to take on the patient role ever again. Being sick blows.

I like this little town

I like this little town. Had a retrieval today. But we don't have a helipad on site. So the CFS unit gets called out to clear a spot on the school oval. If it's night they shine their headlights for the chopper. If it's a Saturday they scare away the footy teams, meaning the game the whole town seems to go watch comes to a halt.

The volunteer ambos shuffle the medics and patient back and forth. It's very quaint. Very community. I'm quite fond of it.

Highlight of the day was when a patient nearly weed on the intern as they were about to catheterise. It would have been laugh out loud funny if it was anywhere else.

no enter key. weird.

I'm not sure why I'm feeling angsty right now. long study day on women's health. I know more than I want to know on the issue now. But it all went well. Every body presented interesting cases. And did a good job.  But now I'm home and feeling restless. What does it all mean?I think the weight of assessment is starting to weigh on me. I think I need this holiday... 1 week!

 I think watching "girl with a dragon tattoo" to chill out was a bad idea.

The picture is the clue

You'll never guess what I saw today! Also, arterial spurting! Wicked!

Interesting factoid, the episode of the simpsons where Moe rescues Homer from a boxing match is actually based on a real life event!

Read about it here!

Catch me im fooling

There's nothing so unfulfilling as the heart-sink patient. It's forty minutes of tears and sympathetic nods. It's obviously important to listen, but ultimately there's nothing you can prescribe to fix their situation even though you desperately want to help.

And no, Mr.s Wisenheimer. The tears were not mine.

Dub-trub

"Ahhh, there's flies in my sterile field." Said the super-doctor as she finished inserting the central line. Rural medicine!

Medicine in the country never ceases to be amazing. Actually that's not true. Myself and my colleague were lamenting how few exciting things had happened over the past few days.

Let me rephrase then. Medicine in the country never ceases, amazing!

The hospital I reside in is pretty small, you can count the number of inpatients on yours or hand most of the time. So when the infrequent occurrence of a proper emergency happens, it gets interesting.

Today we had a full blown resus. The kind where the already dodgy patient is going downhill fast and the ambos radio ahead for you to get your dancing shoes on. It was intense, though as usual I didn't contribute much, not that I was required. The team managed to get the guy back and stable enough.

Of course the unthinkable would happen and the ambos brought in another priority case. Fortunately medstar had arrived and was already working on the first guy, which freed up some of the other doctors. Both patients ultimately got choppered to town, still alive. As well as a third patient from the next town over. A very busy day.

This all happened in the middle of the afternoon. And as I've said previously. There aren't emergency doctors, the people who answer the door are the local GPs. They are all pretty competent though and brilliant general practitioners. Unfortunately if you happen to pull four doctors out of the consulting rooms in order to keep someone alive, the regular GP patients tend to get a little angsty. It's almost as if some people are devoid of empathy.

So that was my afternoon. I did get to see some educational stuff, including a rapid sequence induction, arterial and central line insertion and external pacing. Although I feel bad for learning from other peoples misery, best to be prepared in case I ever end up calling the shots and its one of your lives on the table.

I hope not to suck.