Category: Work

Supervision

I have been at home sick today (which I think may actually be my first ever paid-to-be-unwell day, which is kind of momentous in it’s own little way) and have been being closely looked after.

Jack obviously loves having company around, and he hung around all day making sure that I paid him lots of attention (between blowing my nose of course).

When we were kids my mother used to refer to our cats Tabitha and Tigger as being Supervisory P’s (P for Puss) when they would come and watch us hanging out the washing, cooking dinner, and so on, and I think that Jack is developing similar habits, which I can’t say I’m displeased about :-).

An end to stationary

As I was shopping for filing cabinet folders today I realised that graduating has (temporarily at least) negated another of my bizarrely favorite activities: shopping for stationary.

These days whenever a drug or equipment rep wants to sell us something to us they give us pens, notepads, rulers, calculators, more pens.. well you get the idea, so shopping for stationary becomes a little unnecessary. On the one hand this is good, because I should be spending my pay on paying off my credit card anyway, and besides, I don’t really have the free time any more to be randomly perusing stationary stores, but I did always find it a strangely satisfying looking at the dizzying array of colours and shapes that the pen isle offered up.

Tendons are cool

Now this is going to be a very medical post, but I was watching a patient get a release of their Dupytrens contracture today, which basically involved opening up the skin on the palm of the hand along the axis of the little finger, and chopping out the contracted fascial tissue, allowing the patient to flex and extend their finger normally again afterwards.

Now while the operation is in progress you can see all the flexor tendons for the little finger, which usually lie deep to the fascial sheet, and it struck me while I was watching things that it tendons are damn cool things. Given what they allow us to do they really are pretty underappreciated, and seeing them so clearly and so well on display was frankly cool.

Purry and furry

Today was one of those days where you really appreciate having a cat.

Simone was on call last night, so although I didn’t fare as badly has her, I lost a fair bit of sleep from her being called a number of times.

Then I has a pretty average day, with several quite sick patients that needed sorting out.

Finally trafic was quite scarey on the drive home, with a nasty habit of changing collective speed from 105kph to 35kph with little or no warning (I had to throw out the anchors on several occasions).

So to arrive home to Jack being cute, fluffy, and friendly, was just glorious.

Fuzz therapy goes an awfully long way to making the world better at times like that.

First day’s work, first day’s overtime

Well I’ve just finished my first day at work, and put in for my first overtime too. Turns out that one of the other interns was away sick, and so we the registrar on my team (a registrar is the next level up the chain of command (so to speak) above an intern in a medical team), so I was looking after 2 team’s patient’s with no-one to ask questions to. Luckily one of the other registrars was friendly and helpful, and let me bug her with stupid queries all day, but it was still a full on intro to the world of medical work.
Still, I survived it, and if I managed that on my first day it can’t be going to be that bad (can it???)…

First day’s work, first day’s overtime

Well I’ve just finished my first day at work, and put in for my first overtime too. Turns out that one of the other interns was away sick, and so we the registrar on my team (a registrar is the next level up the chain of command (so to speak) above an intern in a medical team), so I was looking after 2 team’s patient’s with no-one to ask questions to. Luckily one of the other registrars was friendly and helpful, and let me bug her with stupid queries all day, but it was still a full on intro to the world of medical work.

Still, I survived it, and if I managed that on my first day it can’t be going to be that bad (can it???)…

Fine

Well providing I pass, I have just finished my last exam for medicine (touch wood). I had initially intended for this to be entitled “Finé”, as in “Complete” but (initially at least) I couldn’t find the fancy é thing. It occurred to me however that the title worked just as well without the accentuation, becuase with the weight of exams off my shoulders the universe certainly feels mighty fine as well!

The Time-Money disequilibrium

It would appear that I am finally at the pivotal turning point in the much grumbled about time-money disequilibrium.

I have a job offer from Logan, and so I am about to transition from having a fair ammount of discretionary time (between lectures etc) and relatively little discretionary money, to having income, but comparatively little time in which to enjoy spending it. In the interim I seem to be adopting something a a foolish halfway mindset whereby I am spending far more money in a discretionary fashion than I traditionally have, and certainly more than I probably should, while still living the low income low cares high galavanting lifestyle.

I am not really looking forward to when this situation comes to a rather abrupt end, at the hands of undeniable and inescapable fiscal realities.