May 2005 – Page 2 – Ramsay Family Classics

The proud, the few

One of the other things which my brothers brought with them when they popped across the ditch for my wedding (and god bless them for bringing it too!!) was my promised and much anticipated Christmas present, in the form of a beige brigade jersey. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this venerable institution, it is basically NZ’s answer to the Barmy Army, a group of kiwis who get together at sporting fixtures (most specifically cricket, but they’re not picky) all over the globe to provide raucous, playful and good natured support for all New Zealand teams, and they wear, as a matter of preference, the uniform of the New Zealand Cricket Team from the Mid 80’s (a fawn and brown creation). Look out for photos at some point in the future of me in my “rug” at outings and sporting events, and always remember the beige motto:

Reverting to know-it-all-ism

When I was in primary school, I had the unfortunate experience of being unbelievably unpopular as a direct result of my parents failing to educate me in one incredibly important matter (which as an indicator of my own short comings I did not figure out for myself for a number of years): specifically, nobody likes, or more accurately, everybody hates a know-it-all.

Unfortunately for me, every now and then I accidentally revert to know-it-all-ism, although usually it is only for a couple of seconds before I realise what I’m doing, blush, and stop myself.

Now I am not the worlds greatest academic. Never have been and never will be. But I compensate by being, well I’d like to say better than average at the practical side of things. I don’t know (or for that matter give even the faintest hint of a flying f**k) who the third son of the nineteenth century surgeon after whom Mikulicz’s syndrome is named was married to, but I do know the initial treatment of a heart attack, I can take an arterial blood gas, and I can give a ring block and suture a basic wound. As such when we got to talking about basic life support stuff the other day in a tutorial I inadvertently reverted to know-it-all-ism simply because all the “brainy” med students who seemed to have crowded out the room didn’t seem to have the first faintest clue about it, and as the tutorial wound on and moved into the realm of trauma management it just got worse, as I came to realise that on that topic not only did the students not have a clue, the tutor was equally ill prepared and was basically telling us absolute shit (he was an anaesthetics reg after all, and trauma management is not in any way a facet of his usual job), and while that may sound a little arrogant coming from a mere med student, I was in the possibly unusual position of not only knowing the material thanks to an interest in the area and with 2 specific courses training me in that very area under my belt, I could also go home to my fiance, who does surgical trauma assessment and management as a job, and confirm that I was indeed right (which I was).

I doubt I made any friends in the process, but the tutor was a prat, and if I managed to lodge the correct information which may help save a human life in my fellow med students’ heads it will have been worth the effort. It’s just a pity that the other member of my group who is likeminded on these matters was away for that tutorial, because together I’m pretty sure we would have had a great time together telling everyone they were wrong.

Recaffeination

Since starting the ACS rotation, which is the rotation in which we get our exposure to anaesthetics, intensive care, and emergency medicine (the traditionally “high stress” specialties) I have found myself drinking what is for me a huge volume of coffee.
Normally I just drink coffee socially, but this rotation (far more so than during previous rotations) we seem to stop for a cup of coffee (of the really really average instant variety) every time we don’t have anything specific to do. I even got slightly jittery one afternoon. Basically, med school is recaffeinating me.

Getting old

Lately I have been finding that I don’t find the TV ads that are coming out of government departments nearly as annoying, stupid, or clueless as they always used to seem to me.

I have decided that there are two possible explanations for this:

That the advertising companies are becoming smarter at pitching appropriate adds at appropriate audiences, and that the government departments are also getting smarter in allowing the advertising companies greater freedom to do this, or
That I am getting old, and have lost the “Don’t trust anyone over 20”, “I know everything” and “Adults and the Authorities don’t know anything” survival attitudes essential for successfully navigating adolescence.

Given that I am still highly suspicious regarding both advertising companies and government departments, it kind of only leaves one (rather uncomfortable) option.

The domino effect

Having learned all about the Domino effect in high school history, with the US’s paranoid and probably unjustified fear that another form of government (ie. Communism) would grow in popularity and leave America without allies, I find it interesting that the current US administration seems so surprised that the Russian Leadership is a little cagey about George Bush going around actively encouraging all the countries surrounding Russia to adopt American style democracy (yes, there is a difference, and just because it’s American doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s any better than the other flavors of democracy out there) and to become American allies.

Really it’s just the same situation reversed, with overwhelming economic pressures being used to promote government change, instead of the militaristic approaches used in the 1960’s. As such it seems that the Russian response, while being perhaps a little paranoid (like the historical response by the US), is not exactly surprising or unreasonable.

It also seems a little two faced of the Americans to go around saying “We’re good friends with the Russians” on the one hand, while at the same time saying “We think that the Russians were bad in the past for the way they treated the Eastern European states which fell under their influence after WW2, and we think they still are bad for not admitting it”. It’s not as if you couldn’t make similar accusations regarding the USA’s treatment of a number of countries in South America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.

Odd Socks

This morning I went through my normal routine, packing my bag with my clinical clothes in it, jumping on my bike, and headed off to the hospital.

Once there I discovered the problem.

One of the upsides (or downsides) of living together as a couple of professionals is that there are a lot of plain black socks floating around our house. They usually live in appropriately matched pairs in our respective sock drawers, but occasionally they try and cohabit (my socks ending up in Simone’s drawer is the most common variation), and this morning I ran afoul of a new variant I had not run into previously:

My socks are generally the standard style low calf black mens’ socks, while Simone has a variety of styles, and what I found when I went to get changed at the hospital was that the pair of socks I had grabbed from my draw contained one of my normal socks, and one of Simone’s high calf length socks. I had little choice but to wear the mismatched socks, but it felt awfully weird with one calf being squeezed all day, and the other not. Also the long sock caused my trousers to ride up slightly on the long sock side, which also felt quite peculiar.

Queensland Un-Health

Today I went to grand rounds at my hospital (for non-med types Grand rounds is basically a journal club / research presentation meeting), and despite Queensland Health’s aim of improving the health of Queenslanders, they appeared to be trying pretty hard to do the exact opposite to their staff. The lunch which was put on was largely deep fried: Spring rolls, Curry puffs, dim sims, etc. , although I suppose the orange juice was quite healthy.

Of course as an impoverished student (Oh, woe is me :-)) I could not resist the draw of free food. But if your doctor drops dead from a heart attack from having his or her arteries clogged by fatty foods, we may now know why…

Girls World

I have been noticing that almost all the residents* I see around the hospital I am currently at seem to be female. It’s starting to wierd me out a bit. Perhaps it’s just a sampling error, and I’m simply spending my rotations on teams that just happen to currently have female residents assigned to them, or maybe there is a higher proportion of female residents working at the PA, with the excess males (given that there are still more males than females graduating from medical schools in Queensland, if only just) working at some of the other Brisbane hospitals. Whatever the reason, I may have to pay more attention and see if there is an explaination…

*Note for non Med types: The general ranking of doctors starts with residents (including interns, who are first year residents) who basically do all the medical scut work around the hospital, then moves up to registrars who are usually doctors on a training program for one of the specialties, and

I wanted to start the above note with “Note for Americans and other non Med Types” (as a tribute to the book Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaimen – if you don’t know what I’m talking about, go read it. It’s awfully funny and seems to get positive reviews from everyone who reads it) but it just didn’t fit well enough to use it here. Perhaps at some later date….

Runny Honey

I have noticed (much to my disappointment) that in australian supermarkets you can only get runny honey. Now you australians out there may be going “What on earth is he on about? All honey is liquid isn’t it?”, but growning up in New Zealand most of the honey in the shops (and indeed this is still true today) was varying degrees of semi firm, and you spread it with a knife (as opposed to pouring it). Simone seems to think that it is a function of the degree of purity of the honey, with liquid honey having been more highly processed to remove more of the wax from the honey comb (which seems a reasonably theory, but seems to imply that she thinks Australian honey is better because it is more “pure”…). Whether this is true or not I wonder why you can only get the one variety here, as opposed to NZ where you can purchse either, as you personal preference dictates.