it's about time

i passed my driving test on thursday. did you know you have to be on your p-plates for three years?! *jaw drops* what a bloody long time!!

sleeping awake

i'm really tired in the mornings these days. the morning after my on-call nights are naturally the worst. even if i'm not called in. i fall asleep poised on the edge of awakening, waiting for the phone to ring, for another one of my oldies to get sick. now it's five cups of coffee a day. forty milligrams of proton pump inhibitors in the morning. a hurried lunch if i have time. it's almost all a blur. the only images i remember are my patients. their faces. their stories. they're mine. my babies. i love them.

this is surely pathological.

moved into keith house on saturday night. it hasn't changed one bit. the others are whinging about it and they're right. but lethargy overtakes me after six weeks and i'm just happy to have a home to stay in. to be able to have a beer out the front under the tree. watch the stars in the cold ballarat evenings. i am content.

sleepless nights in the rat

it's madness.

called in at 5am to see a lady with high blood pressure and chest pain. a couple of anginines and she started coughing up blood. tried a few times to get a cannula into her arm, hoping to hit a vein. i didnt. the notes said she'd been to the base a couple of mornings ago with svt, except she spontaneously reverted to sinus when the ambulance turned into the bay at emerg. called the consultant on, and all of a sudden my patient became palliative. wonderful.

that was the start of my crazy weekend on call. i had been on call thursday and friday nights too, but they were relatively quiet. saturday i worked until past 11pm. dvt. cellulitis. falls. hypoglycaemia. blocked picc lines. confusion. even admitted a new patient. sunday was much the same. except i got to called in to talk a lady out of killing herself. that'll get your pulse up a bit. all in all it was a good experience. the consultant on call was a absolute champ and pretended not to mind when i called her for the sixth or eighth time and ordered me to have dinner stat.

otherwise not much happening here in the rat. missing lots of lunches and eating a lot of crappy dinners. not really drinking and passing much water. my cold is still hanging around. and my sleep is terrible (i keep thinking the on-call phone's gonna go off). got a new reg yesterday and she seems okay. still living above the hospital and the crew's getting pretty pissed off. i hope the old keith house comes good soon. going for my hazard perception test this week and hopefully the driving test next friday. fingers crossed i'll be a p-plater by next weekend. what a joke. oh and i got a palm t5 on monday, courtesy of doris who went back to melbourne. now i just need to find someone who's got mims or amh.

i must admit i'm loving it. this has been an excellent few weeks. i must be going nuts like my oldies.

a day in the life...

my reg was away sick today. again. i walked into the ward at 750am having only slept about three hour last night because it was so hot. straight away i was asked to check out a confused oldie who had a fall a few hours ago. he needed three stitches to his forehead. after that, another drowsy 80 something who was making green things coming out of both ends of her gi tract. gave her some fluids. then sorted out a diabetic who was having trouble peeing. did some ward work. certified someone dead. then the social worker grabbed me for a family meeting i didn't know about. held a family meeting of my own. listened to fifteen minutes of whinging on the phone from an angry son. did more ward work. had lunch at 5pm. admitted someone. more ward work. checked some bloods. trudged home at a quarter to eight.

aussie day was good. watched tennis and cricket at gareth's house while listening to the triple j countdown. drank a lot. saw the fireworks by the lake with thousands of people in the drizzle. then had pancakes and maccas while watching the tennis. so lovely...

next week i start after hour on-calls. monday, wednesday, friday, and the entire weekend. *sigh* i need a holiday already *big sigh* paperwork is already piling up. *bigger sigh* and we're still staying on the top floor of the hospital. *biggest sigh*

at least we got paid on wednesday!! =)

this is dr li from gandarra calling...

things are going better than i had feared. i might even say i'm happy, but that would just be silly.

despite the main consultant announcing that he's going away for six weeks ("the heart and soul of gandarra" one person told me), initial impressions of my scattered caffeine-loaded reg, and horror stories from last years interns, i have survived my first three days (well, i am walking out of here as soon as i finish typing this up).

the nurses at gandarra have been very understanding (as would befit those who have spent years working in a palliative care unit). they suggest what drugs i should prescribe, at what dose, via which routes, how often and how to spell the drug name. wonderful. slowly i'm getting to know my oldies. they're lovely. my reg clare has been holding my hands through everything, and has a wonderful attitude: all the work is hers unless i claim it. my pager has gone off once so far, and it was the previous intern asking for my email address and me offering to buy him a drink for all the paperwork he did on the weekend after he was supposed to have left. haven't done an iv yet - that fear is still there to be conquered.

ten/eleven hour days are manageable when all you've got to do after you knock off is go to the pub, or walk around the lake, or watch tennis on tv. i have a feeling that the rest of the world is rushing by crazily but i'm just cruising along...

but things are nevertheless different. i still catch myself referring to myself as a medical student. and everytime i sign my name i have to stop and admire it. but cynicism is starting to creep in. like xiu said, when you only have three patients it's easy to know them well and see them everyday. but when you have nine - or twenty - it's a little harder. and all the paperwork!

i remember watching an episode of er, in which carter tells the interns to write a letter to themselves. i think that's a fantastic idea. we should all do it. we should all try and hold on to something of the dreams we had as medical students...