Author: Dave

Piccies

Today we had our 19 week morphology scan, and got to see our baby properly for the first time. Of course in good Ramsay fashion it spent about half of the scan time rolling backward and forwards, wriggling around, putting it’s hand in front of it’s face, and generally making like difficult for our Obstetrician who was doing the scan.

I’ve put some pics up both on facebook and in the photo section of our blog.

We’re getting another one in 4 weeks and I might try and get a few more then as well.

To see the Pics click on the thumbnail below.

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Contracts

Simone is currently accepting tenders on proposals to redesign the anatomy and (more importantly) physiology of the female reproductive system in specific relation to it’s adaptation and responses to pregnancy.

All design proposals with appropriate costings should be forwarded to Simone, care of “M**** F****ing Morning Sickness, Bentley Park, Cairns”.

One additional design suggestion which while not being an absolute requirement for any submission, would be a favoring component of any successful bid would be the ability to transfer symptoms (or indeed just the entire pregnancy) to the male other half…

Knockin’ my balls around

On the weekend Simone and I took a trip out to the local driving range and hit a few golf balls around.

Now I’ve never actually played golf properly, and my previous experience involves a lot of mini golf, a lot of Mario golf, and one prior trip to a driving range (with some high school mates, were the twofold aims were hit it further than the guy who went before you and try to hit the buggy going around collecting up the balls).

So I was surprised that I managed to put in not too bad a showing, and found myself rather enjoying the whole thing, especially once I figured that I was much less likely to slice the ball off on some wild angle with the 5 iron than I was with the driver. The only thing I didn’t try out was seeing how far I could get the ball to go with a wild swing from the putter (a little something I can try out next time maybe).

Perhaps when it cools down a bit again and I can bear to be out doors for more than 30 minutes at a go I could take some lessons to see if I like the other bits of the game as well.

Addendum

We went grocery shopping today and after weeks of looking at all the election advertising, almost all of it was gone.

Apparently the industrious little candidates and their helpers had taken most of them down overnight.

The amusing thing however was that there were still a few Labour signs up and about, and I had to agree with Simone when she suggested that perhaps the reason for this was that all the labour camp were still recovering from the celebrations from last night.

Choice ’07

Last night was of course the election, and unsurprisingly Kevin Rudd won.

However for me the real conundrum was a lot greater than who to vote for (firstly because there really was no competition, and secondly because I couldn’t vote anyway), but rather what to watch while I waited for the election results to come in. TopGear or Empire Strikes Back.

Oh the  tension. The indecision.

And in an amusing followup to my previous post, it appears that effort *does* win elections, because in our electorate the underdog Labour candidate (who you will recall has had minions and supporters out waving plackards all day every day) was elected after a 15% swing in favour of Labour. Huge!!

If effort won elections…

In our electorate it seems that the Liberal candidate is going to beat the labour candidate on the day, however if effort counted for anything then it should be a raunaway labour landslide.

Pretty much every day now on the way to and from work there are people on the sides of the roads with “Your rights at work” shirts on waving campaign posters for Kevin Rudd, the local labour candidate, and union propoganda, I mean policies, in general.

What’s most noticeable however is that while the Labour guys are always there, I’ve never seen any of the other party’s candidates being supported in this fashion, and it makes you feel that perhaps no-one loves the other guys enough to make the effort of standing in the rain and shine waving their placards around for them. And if the labour followers are that enthusiastic then surely this guy must me amazingly inspirational and far more worth voting for than the others…

At the other end of the spectrum however has been poor John Howard, who has finally reached the point where he can’t think of anything compelling to say and so can only resort to the frankly pathetic “You should be afraid of change, so you should vote for me again (although I can’t think of a more convincing reason why you should otherwise do so at the moment…)”. Even Simone who’s a lot more Liberal party tolerant than I commented that it was pretty pathetic.

Oh thank heavenly merciful crap

I passed the exam. Don’t know exact details yet as to how much I passed by but for the time being I’m happy enough. Now I just need to get rid of all the excess adrenalin that’s currently running around my body (It was a little anxious waiting for the results, and there were some hiccups with the college website this morning which meant that for about a quarter of an hour I thought I’d failed and had resigned myself to the fact that I’d have to continue studying and re-sit). In hind sight the coffee I had this morning may not have been the best idea…

Dave should not be allowed near students

Today we had two third year med students floating around ICU and I found it next to impossible to not start yabbering on at great length to pass on my “wisdom” (you can all stop sniggering now). I explained ventilators to them (qualifying it with the fact that I only have a pretty rudimentary understanding myself). I discussed ionotropes. I went through acid base status, membrane electro-chemical gradients, and potassium regulation and management.

In the end it was probably a good thing that they popped off for an extended lunch break, or I would have just kept on talking and talking, and never gotten any work done at all.

Hessian sack

One of the phrases that I picked up shortly after moving to Australia to study medicine was “She’s so cute she’s look good in a Hessian sack” (which one of my female friends used to describe one of her younger and at that stage thinner friends).

This summer I find myself constantly reminded of that saying, not because all the girls are cute (although I suppose you see a few good looking ones around), but rather because the current fashions seem hell bent on testing the notion by producing garments that are only a small technicality away from being actual honest to god real life hessian skirts and tops. They are seriously ugly and completely unflattering to every person I’ve seen them on and yet like hamsters to a cliff edge young girls are all over the place in them because they’re “the new thing”.

Now whatever my views are on moronic consumer sheep behavior I think the main point which has been shown is that the adage is clearly false, as I don’t believe that I have seen anyone (no matter how cute they may be) who has actually managed to look anything other than foolish in those particular variants of hessian sacks.

What was really like a drug were the drugs…

Today I had a “sick” day, to go and get a gastroscopy done (gastroscopy = camera down into stomach to look for problems).

This all results from me being married to a surgical registrar, who when I mentioned that I get reflux a couple of times a month started insisting that I should get a gastroscopy to make sure that there wasn’t anything like a huge ulcer in my stomach causing it all. Typical doctorish scaremongering really, but as is always the way in marriage eventually the poor meek husband gives in to the pestering of his domineering wife and does whatever she wants, and so I went and got the scope done.

Now the whole process involves an hour of amnesia (ie I have no memory of anything for about an hour after they put the drugs in) sandwiched in between 2 two hour blocks of unmitigated boredom (firstly waiting for the procedure in a waiting room with lowest common denominator breakfast television blasting loudly across it, and then sitting in the recovery area with nothing to do while they wait for the drugs to wear off to their satisfaction before they let you go).

The other downside was that while I was out to it on the good drugs John Howard was doing one of his “visit the rural hospital so you can pretend you care about the bush and sick children” things in the same hospital, about two rooms from where I was. If things had been planned a bit better they could have put me earlier on the scope list so that while I was recovering I could have filled in the time by giving old Johnny a frank and honest (not to mention vitriolic and possibly obscene) piece of my mind (and later I could do a Hollywood star job and call my own press conference to blame the whole thing on the prescription drugs that my doctor had just given me), but unfortunately it was not to be.

Anyway, no big holes found, and nothing that needs fixing at the moment. And in 5 years time I get to do it all again. I wonder if I can fit it in with the next election…