intern gastritis

annual leave means i get to sleep ten hours a day.

the first problem with this is: the more i sleep, the more tired i am. now i'm sneaking in an hour nap in the afternoon. and yet i remain lethargic. i see now what lou was going through last week. fortunately the kitchen at yuille house sucks and i do not itch to go to coles everyday. however, i did buy the hitchhiker's omnibus yesterday and have nearly finished the first of the trilogy of four. i am also spending excessive amounts of my time playing indoor lawn bowls. not good.

the second problem, of course, is this intern gastritis business. strictly speaking, it started before internship. epigastric tenderness. reflux. and now nausea and loss of appetite. this ppi thing isn't helping that much. i think i may need a scope. *sigh*

looking for a house to live in atm. i'm going to visit a couple more likely candidates this afternoon. and then i'll get to spend more money buying new beds and desks and useless decorative things. hopefully they come with free drinks. boing!

i hate emergency

the pros:
- i only work 40 hours a week
- all the skills that i'm learning
- i get to leave the arseholes behind at the end of my shift

the cons:
- the lack of continuity of care
- my screwed up sleep-wake cycle
- the arseholes that i meet at the start of my shift

the role of an emergency doctor can be summed in two questions:
1. is the patient sick?
- if so, proceed to question 2.
- if not, make some noises and get rid of them.
2. does the patient need to be admitted?
- if so, get the medical/surgical registrar/ECATT/O+G/paeds, do what needs to be done, and get rid of them.
- if not, give analgesia/antiemetics/rehydration/plaster, and get rid of them.

welcome to the medical meat grinder =(

what was i thinking?

you will never guess what i just did today!

yep. i signed up to do an online arts degree with open universities australia. twenty-four units. five hundred bucks a pop. all you have to do is a couple of hours of reading a day and you'll get a degree in six years or so.

so what the hell - i figure i might as well get my ba as well as my fracp at the same time. maybe.

can someone tell me it's not really such a bad idea? >_<

spoilt rotten

one chapter ends. another begins. i was spoilt rotten with bacon and eggs for breakfast, chocolate cake for morning tea, a card, and a box of chocolates. i feel guilty. i must get these lovely girls delicious things for having looked after me so well for ten weeks.

thank you gandarra.

my life on the back of a postcard

a few weeks between posts usually means i've been busy living life rather than just thinking about it. this is not the case this time. i have no life outside the hospital. i am a mindless paper-crunching drone, churning through deaths and discharges, charts and referrals.

two of my favourite patients died at gandarra recently. i love losers, eccentrics and grumpy old farts. they make my life more interesting than a beer and smoke after work.

week nine of ten. it's flashed past, hasn't it? just when you're getting settled into that comfortable zone called habit, the fear starts creeping back into your heart. emergency will be a jolt to the system. cool.