Again

 Blogs may have gone out of fashion, but it's such a good way to mark time passing and reflect on periods of growth. Given that nobody reads blogs any more I feel much better about throwing my life out to the void.

Anyway.

We had another baby, Abigail. Two under two has been... challenging. It's not that it's always hard. It's just that when one thinks you have mastered a challenge, a new one arises.

The latest challenge has been getting our eldest to sleep in a bed. It's been a lot of being woken up by a curious two year old, buoyed by her ability to get out of the bed on her own volition.

The pandemic seems functionally over. Ironically I finally caught COVID and gave it to my family. It was fairly uneventful save a few myalgias. At work normality is resuming and face masks are mostly vanishing from faces, except when facing a patient. Not that im complaining. THe other day I had someones bleeding trache blast blood all over me. The mask and goggles I put on spared me the full damage at least.

Finally, I finished my anaesthetic training. I'm a consultant now working in a public hospital. I start private practice in a few weeks. That will be terrifying albeit lucrative.

Everything is coming up Milhouse. 

My loves

Times have changed

 Well. Two years since I last updated. 

Where we left off in 2020, isolated in Darwin where Corona didn't exist.

To set the scene:

1. The global pandemic rages on. I still haven't caught covid.

2. We moved back from Darwin. I spent six months at the women's doing countless sections and epidurals.

3. On the home front we had a baby of our own, little Victoria. She has been a source of endless delight. 

4. Worked in the paediatric hospital for four months. It turns out I don't mind kids. 

5. Went back to my favourite hospital, sat and passed my final exam with the help of some good friends I have made along the way. 

6. 2022 has rolled around and I am finishing my anaesthetic fellowship in vascular surgery and neurosurgery. Though to be honest as the fellow you are just used as a general dogs body, and left to supervise junior trainees at night.

Sometimes on night shift I even get to crawl in to this crappy bed in a dank suicide box room in the bowels of the hospital.

This year has been pretty wild. I've seen some stuff.

Just in the last few months I've had to help jam a breathing tube through the front of someone's neck following a trauma. 

I had my first person try to bleed to death during a C section a couple nights ago after an artery got accidentally severed and I had to pump in a loooot of blood. 

And now I find myself increasingly left alone to manage brain haemorrhages, ruptured AAA and septic people with perforated bowels.

The devil's anaesthetic

I don't think I've been so terrified and had so much fun at the same time ever. Some times it feels like a game - make the numbers look pretty and put the tubes in the other tubes. And then every now and again you look back and think, 'wow, I just said the last words someone will ever hear and I didn't even realise it at the time.'

Anyway, life is good.

All quiet on the Northern Front

Perhaps its a bit crazy, but its one of those thoughts. In fact its the kind of thing that comes back and haunts you after you die as people ironically mention your internet commentary.

But I'm missing the war.

The first iteration of intubation PPE

It's probbaly not a bad thing though. It reminds me of a soldier keen to get into the fight, unable to appreciate the horrors of a war yet to come.

And yet, here I am.

We've trained, we've run scenarios, we've put on our armour and taken it off so many times it has begun to lose meaning. We've stopped all but the emergency operations, and reoriented ourselves to the intensive care unit. Hallways have been cleared, and tape lines marked out to designate clean from dirty.

But by some fortuitous chance I find myself in the Northern Territory, where only one case has been sick enough to come to ICU, and now two weeks down the line there are no new cases and everyone has all but recovered. I spend my time putting in epidurals, doing C sections and giving gentle GA's to the mildly sick.

Hell, I shaved all the hairs off my face for this battle.

Have I missed the war?

I've seen the photos, I've heard the first hand accounts. My overseas colleagues tell me about their now non clinical friends dragged back to the front lines to touch patients for the first time in years.

I was particularly moved by this junior doctors account in the NHS of what the front lines are like. And the relief she felt when finally her number was up and she caught the virus herself.

But here I am. A guy who can intubate and run a ventilator, without a hole to put a tube in or a bag to squeeze.

The waiting has been hard, and this is only the opening salvo in a long war. But if I've somehow missed the war - I'll be okay with it. But I'm happy to do my part when the time comes.

Well done Australia. You stayed the thrashing sword of COVID, and bought our army time for our tactical advances over the next year or two.

Perhaps I'll see some action after all...

Matt, Kat and Pajero. RDH staff accommodation.

2 years and 2 months

I'm still alive. But found this from 2003, while clearing some stuff out of my folks place.

Humble blogging

I am studying for exams again - which means I'm procrastablogging. That's right, I've put on my fingerless gloves and hunched over my keyboard to quickly write an update. It turns out I forgot to blog for over a year.

Things that have happened since the last blag:
Coupled up
Spent another six months in ED, spent six months in AMU
Got in to anaesthetic training, and am now working as an Anaesthetics registrar at a new hospital.
Purchased my first house.
Celebrated the new house by exploding the water heater and nearly losing my eyebrows while attempting to relight the pilot light.

Perhaps a couple pictures then, as I'm too lazy to insert words. This is my backyard. It started out filled with old Italian lady pots, concrete and olive trees. Plus a stupid amount of bricks and cement. As you can see, I've managed to make it look a lot worse over the last three months.

More to come once the skip comes  and the bobcat has leveled the back. Looking forward to giving my avocados a proper home finally.

That's it for now.

A Tidal volume

 "But then a doc from theatre came out and grabbed me again, offering me the opportunity to drop a tube down the next guys airway. It was sooo cool. I've seen it done on ER lots of times, but to actually jam the tongue down with the metal dealy, see the cords and then pass a tube through them - so cool! Best of all, it went in first shot, in the right spot. "

-Lumpage - 2011, as a first year medical student

I'm on anaesthetics for a couple months. I am absolutely loving it. I haven't had the opportunity to try intubation again since that one and only time I did it in my first year of medical school. It has been great to get some more experience with airways, and already in the two weeks I've been there I can definitely say I have progressed. I wouldn't want the job to fall to me if someones life depended on it - but I can now get the tube in some of the time under optimal conditions!

Just call me the tooth fairy (credit to another web site for their photo)

It turns out it's actually technically more difficult than I thought putting what is essentially a gaint metal spoon in to someones limp and lifeless mouth in order to see down their throat. The sensation of accidentally touching what acts as a giant lever on a patients teeth, is disturbing. But practice makes perfect - or at least improves rapidly.

Onward!

A quiet breath