time to sleep

the last few days sure have been long ones.

wednesday: afternoon off started at 4pm. yay! a couple of hours to dash through questions before study group, which finished at 10:30pm. but at least i got to do a tummy tap, and enjoyed a lovely dinner with my study buddies - probably the only real food i've had this week!

thursday started at 7:30am with echo tutorials. ducked out at 6:15pm to go to lectures at the college. my god what a trio: forty minutes on rheumatoid arthritis delivered in a monotone; ten thousand slides on lupus which left every one much more confused than when we started; and a tedious drag through the evidence free zone that is osteoarthritis. barely managed to stay awake. back to work until 11:15pm to finish my transplant meeting presentations.

friday: the boss decides during the transplant meeting that he didnt want me to present the third case after all. i couldve gone home an hour earlier!! sigh. trudge trudge trudge through the day, then the crazy cover shift during which i received four referrals for admission plus a smattering of reviews and random ward jobs. finally got out of the place, grabbed a pie from the corner 7-eleven, only to be confronted at the tram stop by a "hey you come over here, quickly!" from three big guys with shotguns. "have you seen a forty-year old man with a white jacket and jeans in the 7-eleven?!" trams are backed up all the way up st kilda road as the cops set up a blockade. more questioning from detectives. two drunk guys holding beer bottles were "sure you were after us, you know, drinking in public. please dont shoot us, were just being dickheads" and a nervous asian woman "i feel unsafe. whats going on? can you guys escort me home?" it wouldve been hilarious if i wasnt so exhausted. had to make an hour-long detour home on foot. luckily i had michelle on the phone to guide me through the pitch black fawkner park "so you're walking alone in the middle of a park at night with a murderer on the loose?"

saturday. slept in until 11. finally gave in to the grumbling in my stomach. miso soup and udon noodles. back to bed. ahh...

retrospective

looking back at the mildura posts, it seems like all i did was grumble about work and the system. but in fact it wasnt as bad as all that. i certainly dont want to leave myself with the impression that i had a horrible time by the murray (not that i ever actually saw the murray while i was there), when i look back in a few months/years time.

we had a great bunch of registrars and residents up there with us. went out to dinner almost every night. met several lovely, interesting people and made some good friends. i enjoyed the challenge of being a medical registrar, mostly, and was surprised to find that i didnt mind general medicine too much. i wonder if that had something to do with the way general medicine is practiced in the bush, working within the constraints of limited resources and alongside the stoicism and blind faith of country people.

once again, leaving didnt worry me too much. i think sometimes im glad to leave a place. and other times i leave with a sense that i will be back there again, down the track. with mildura, i was looking forward to coming back to melbourne, somewhat; but i also got the feeling, as i was walking out the front door of the hospital on that last morning, that it wont be long before im back there again.