Needless

I'm an Anaesthetist. I put in intravenous drips & central lines; I draw up various drugs from glass ampoules, I take blood and I put in stitches. I handle a variety of sharp things every day.

It was bound to happen sooner or later.

While stitching a patient's arterial line in place yesterday, the needle accidentally went through my glove and pricked my finger. Bugger. Hassle.

Sadly there is no equivalent to the three-second rule* for needlestick injuries.

It's a common occurence in a hospital and can happen to almost anyone; that's why there are strict protocols to follow when it does happen because of the risk of catching blood-transmitted diseases (eg squeeze out any blood, run under a tap for 5 mins, contact the Occupational Health department, fill in forms, etc). Did all that. And thankfully my patient was low risk for carrying anything horrid and it was only a minor incident.

My main problem now was that I had to provide a blood sample for the lab for storage.

Now I can quite happily stick needles into other people. No problemo signor. Eez-a no big-a deal. Awake, asleep, adult, kid, any size, any needle - lemme at 'em.
As the 6th law of The House of God states: "THERE IS NO BODY CAVITY THAT CANNOT BE REACHED WITH A #14 NEEDLE AND A GOOD STRONG ARM"

I've lost count of the number of patients who've said to me
- "I don't like needles, Doc"
(It's always "Doc", never Doctor - does this happen in with other professions? Den? Vic? Who?)
And each time, I reassure them, whoever they are, young or old
- "It's not so bad. It's just a little scratch". That's what I tell other people.

But I lie. It is so bad. It's a hollow metal spike going through the skin.

And in this case, through my skin. And it hurts. Ow. More Ow. Still Ow. Comeoncomeoncomeoncomeon....

I had foolishly agreed to let a newly-qualified doctor friend of mine with a spare minute take my blood sample. Despite the threats encouragement I gave him beforehand, he didn't get it first time. Of course, I wasn't initially aware of this because I was looking the other way, remoulding the plastic armrest of the chair as I gripped it tightly with the other hand. I did not cry.

It hurt though - and when he pulled the needle out, it still hurt.
I pressed a cotton-gauze pad against the site & I mumbled "thanks" but I was thinking "I hope you fall down eighteen flights of stairs onto a spike - why did it hurt so much, you bastard?"


After a few minutes of applying pressure, I took off the gauze. A purple-black bubble started to grow under my skin between two holes which started to leak red**. Oops. Slapped the gauze back on & asked the nurse for a fresh one.

It was at that very moment that the Consultant barked for me to come over and tell the assembled team about our new patient immediately.

So as I was presenting this man's case to an assortment of doctors, nurses & physiotherapists, Sister was knelt beside me putting a tight dressing on the front of my bleeding elbow. It must've looked absolutely ridiculous.

I tried not to think about it (it's just a little blood test for fuck's sake) but my elbow stayed sore the whole day.

I'm such a wuss.
In fact I've still got a plaster on it now...


Don't even get me started on pulling off plasters...

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* for food which falls on the floor - if you pick it up within 3 seconds, it's still clean and safe to eat (well-known medical fact)

** Yes, I know- I probably ought to have a clotting test done. Did I mention I don't like needles...

Little Old Ladies

Imagine a world without little old ladies? Who would run our charity shops & hospital cafes? It would be chaos.


I was working on ITU today (that's the Intensive Care Unit for those of you who can't work it out...)

One old woman patient was so unwell that her illness had changed her completely from being bright, sweet & pleasant to absolutely impossible to handle.

It was quite sad, the poor thing was confused as anything, pulled out all her drips, wouldn't let anyone near her to look after her - a nursing nightmare. And when the senior consultant went to talk to her with the rest of us around, the patient was having none of it. Confusion does not respect status.

I'm cross with myself for not having the presence of mind to write down what the old lady said. Because despite being as mad as a box of frogs, this pensioner, God knows how, spontaneously spat out at my boss a tirade of the most perfectly crafted, imaginative, florid insults I have ever heard. In my life.

Imagine the kind of intentionally hurtful names you'd call someone (or be called*) when you were a little kid, mixed with words that you'd think someone's grandma would never have even heard, let alone use, separated by suggestions so overwhelmingly profane they would have been cut from The Exorcist, all aggressively machine-gunned at one undeserving victim.

Thirty seconds of pure, concise offensiveness; she was spectacularly insulting. And we all watched silently.

At first.

One by one, the multidisciplinary team started to crack. One nurse had to hide her face behind a clipboard because she couldn't stop shaking with laughter. Another dived for cover from out of the bedspace curtains because she could not hold it in. None of us made eye contact for fear of bursting.

Miraculously, I remained straight-faced; but my eyes probably betrayed that I was in awe of this lady's verbal capacity.

The consultant remained perfectly unfazed; she ignored it and got on with sorting her out.



That's professionalism.

Good behaviour

My next shift isn't till Friday. So far, I have spent my time off wisely.

Last night I saw Casino Royale. I won't give any of the plot away but I have a few issues:

First off, it's a great film. Which makes up for Sarah not allowing me to wear a tuxedo to the cinema. When we got there EVERYONE was wearing them (all right, two guys, but still I wouldn't have looked out of place. In the dark).

Daniel Craig is perfect as James Bond; he's very old-school, probably as Ian Fleming had imagined him. In my opinion, he looks like Steve McQueen, particularly as he looks slightly out of focus compared to everyone else, just like Steve McQueen did in those computer-edited 1980s Holsten Pils adverts with Griff Rhys-Jones.

(Anyone still with me?)

There was one very cool gadget in the film - I might get an in-car defibrillator myself (& wire it to the passenger seat for a laugh...)

There were some scenes of Free Running (a.k.a Parkour), something I've always wanted to learn to do. I'm fairly bouncy, I can jump well & I've got reasonable balance... Who am I kidding? - I tried to climb up the walls of a passageway today (to read the gas meter outside my flat) and couldn't do it! I'll do it one day though....

As for the inaccuracies & handy coincidences, it is an action movie, you can let it go. I'm sure digitalis isn't so effective so quickly when you drink it, etc. Don't know about shagging straight after undergoing that kind of torture though...


And today I slept in till midday. Jeez, my breath when I got up, I swear it could've cut glass...


Then this afternoon I got my haircut. I'm not good with haircuts. I went in looking like a Lego man, I came out looking like a loo brush.

Could've been worse I s'pose. I once had long hair, a lot like Rachel from Friends... Come to think of it, I grew it like that first, which means she (and half the women in the Western world) copied me.

Which makes me a fashion icon.


Hey, not bad for a Wednesday.

Late-night conversation

I've just been to see an ENT patient on the ward:
"Can't you take him to ITU?" said his doctor. "We can't look after him here, the nurses can't see him from their desk."
Sadly, she was entirely serious.

I moved the desk. Problem solved.
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On my way back to ITU, I popped into the Doctor's Mess. A bored medic was watching music TV. The Beatfreaks song Superfreak came on & a midget Michal Jackson impersonator appeared on screen.

"His cock's normal size" he says, without looking up from the telly.

"Huh?" was the best I could come up with. (I'm tired, OK?)

"They always are with midgets. His dick's gonna be the same size as a normal bloke's. Must look huge on him."

I asked him how he knew this. "Midget porn" he says.


You can't say my blog isn't educational...?

Good week, Bad week...

Lots has been happening this week - here's a summary (of what I can remember):


GOOD: Won the annual Hospital Pub Quiz along with a bunch of other anaesthetists ("The Gas Board"). Six points for knowing the Noble Gases - thanks Tom Lehrer!

BAD(ish): Went to a club afterwards - sober - on a student night; there were people there who were literally half my age. And the "cheese" they played (which for me is stuff like Come On Eileen, Living on a Prayer, etc) was only a few years old like Firestarter. I'm getting old, man...

GOOD: Was included in an article in Hospital Doctor (a weekly medical newspaper) about comedian doctors, alongside Harry Hill, Graham Garden, Graham Chapman, etc... wonder if I can put that on my CV?


BAD: Finished moving house - now live 50 miles away from Sarah.

GOOD: Finished moving house - now live 50 miles away from Sarah
(only joking if you're reading this, honey!)

BAD: Finished moving house - now I can't find anything because I don't know which box /bag any of my stuff is in. Out of thirty dotted around the new flat.

GOOD: Finished moving house - now live 50 miles away from Birmingham.


BAD: One of my colleagues was badly electrocuted by some faulty medical equipment - they're OK now after a few days in hospital but it really shouldn't have happened in the first place.
Shocking.

BAD but also GOOD: Pipex have, after 3 weeks, STILL not sorted out my internet connection at my new place (so I'm typing this at 2am on a break on an Intensive Care night shift).
However, this has meant that I'm not spending so much time sitting at my computer - and I've rediscovered my CD collection - some CDs I haven't listened to in years, early REM & Mansun, old compilations, NME cover discs - fantastic!

BAD: I found out that I own a Betty Boo CD (it was second hand...) Lord, please forgive me...

BAD/GOOD: One of our young but terminally ill patients quickly got much worse & died. We try not to get too attached in this job, but even so, several of us were crying. His family were all with him though, and he didn't suffer. It still sucks though.

GOOD: Completely out of the blue, 4 different nurses/students have said really complimentary things to me this week - I don't think they're after anything... (but you can't be too sure)


That'll do. You lot have been a bit stingy on comments of late, so feel free to contribute (preferably something reasonably sensible, but you can only do your best!)

House-warming

Studies have shown that, apart from death and divorce, moving house is the most stressful thing you go through in your life. Oh, I can believe that...

I thought I'd have finished over a week ago - I only just gave the keys back to my old place tonight. I am covered in dust, my chest full of the wheezes and have a car full of crap* that I couldn't bring myself to throw away (and that's after 2 carloads of journals & magazines to the paper recycling bins and 7 rubbish sacks of junk). And now I have to drive over to my new place, empty the car and tidy all the stuff away somewhere before I can go to bed! Gah!!


Can't wait to be back at work tomorrow, should be less stressful!

* Literally crap - some goit let his dog take a dump on Sarah's doorstep, which I stood in on my way out and didn't notice until I got into the car... grrr...
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BTW The central heating in my new place is fully electric and divided into zones; I have no idea how to operate the frankly baffling controller - so one room is freezing cold while another is hot enough for CDs to melt.
Not funny but relevant for the title of the post.

Fire works

I went to a Firework display on Sunday
(or "fire bombs" as Mum calls them - bless her) .

Hundreds of people were there at Edgbaston Cricket Ground; it was hosted by a local radio station so we all had to sit and listen to DJ banter and watch a couple of live R&B acts & a dance display and then join in several Mexican waves before they finally let us see some bloody fireworks, over an hour later.

The organisers had, however, made one crucial error.

They'd sat us so that we filled one half of the oval-shaped stadium - fair enough, we could all see the music stage & the big screens. Unfortunately, some clever-head had forgotten that to truly appreciate a fireworks display, it's nice, nay essential, to be able to see the fireworks in the sky.

And half of the audience had a roof above their heads.

Well done. No really, genius.

(We figured this out early enough & went to stand elsewhere - but duh!)

Centrefold

It's wrong enough that until last week, Argos's website apparently had a home-poledancing kit in their Children's Toys section.

But I saw this in passing at the weekend:















Sending out the wrong messages, surely...?

Moving vile Asians

OK maybe that's too harsh a title for a post about my parents.

But man, it was Nag City this weekend.

I haven't finished moving into my new flat, but they came to visit anyway 'cos they were in town for a conference. So I had my work cut out, from making the flat presentable, to ferrying them & their friends around and trying to keep them fed & entertained.

But I survived with my sanity intact, just...

Culminated this morning in Mum & Dad wanting eggs for breakfast - there were none at 2 local petrol stations but I eventually found a supermarket, followed by another one which was actally open.
I bring home my hard-earned quarry - my parents then tell me off for eating eggs, which are unhealthy! I just can't win!

I also tried to teach them how to say "Cotswolds". We went via "coleslaw", "cold sore", "Cat's World", Costwell" and "cots swill" but they eventually got it.

Then they changed their mind and decided to visit somewhere else instead.


Nnnnrrrrrrggggaaaaaaarrrgh!

Moving Violations

I'm still moving house. There are now two properties in my name which are an absolute tip - I'm aiming to get them both tidy by the weekend... not sure if that's gonna happen as my old flat is literally thickly carpetted with papers that I need to deal with - revision notes, lyrics, newspapers, sheet music - sadly I have to fight the urge to shove the lot in a bin/bonfire as I need to keep a significant proportion of them.

A few days ago I hired a Ford Transit. It's huge in comparison to anything else I've ever driven (you could easily fit a bed in the back of it^*) and really meaty to drive.

IT WAS SO COOL!!!

I even bought myself a big Yorkie and put a copy of The News Of The World on the dashboard. Unfortunately I couldn't find anyone to sit in the front with me pretending to be my pikey missus and kids.

I'm used to pootling around in my automatic Ford Focus (before you start, I buy automatics and after a couple of years I give them to my Mum & get myself another car).

It was sad having to give the beast van back. But at least I'm less paranoid about possibly crushing other vehicles now. I didn't have any accidents driving the van - but two cars hit mine today - both their fault but it's still suspicious...

Ho hum
Back to work
-S-

^* I'm not sure I'm allowed to tell you Sarah's feelings on transit vans but I think you can guess...

Amazing what they can do nowadays...