A Luce Affiliation

One thing about my job is the old people. Here are some observations about old people. (Don't get me wrong, I defected FROM paediatrics to do Emergency Med. I like old people). 1. Some old people can talk a LOT. Especially if you ask them about what they've been eating, or who does their grocery shopping. When I listen to an old person talk I can't help but think of the Simpsons episode where Grampa Simpson tells a really long boring story as an old-person weapon: We can't bust heads like we used to. But we have our ways. One trick is to tell stories that don't go anywhere. Like the time I caught the ferry to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for m'shoe. So I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt. Which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. Gimme five bees for a quarter, you'd say. Now where...

I have nearly finished reading ‘The Pen and the Stethoscope’, an anthology of writing by doctors, edited by Leah Kaminsky. The book is approximately half non-fiction and half fiction. I admit that I enjoyed the non-fiction more- there was a predominance of doctors writing about their early experiences as interns and residents. The stories were often familiar to me- a missed diagnosis of leaking AAA, the frustration of continuing intensive care on people who should be allowed to die in peace. But I was thoroughly impressed at how exciting the stories are- these doctors can really write! I think that the early years of doctoring- internship and residency- provides the richest fodder for writing. In these early years you are most acutely aware of the chasm between your experiences as a doctor and your previous non-medical experiences. You are innocent enough to be properly awed or disgusted by things. The junior doctors are also the ones most often put in ridiculous situations trying ...

Yesterday one of my colleagues had an alcoholic patient, who gets all her wine via online supermarket shopping. She need never leave the house again!!

I used to ask Jason, "Will you leave me this week?" And he would say, "Hmm....no, not this week." "Okay!" Now I tell him, "Today my love for you is as big as Uluru." "Today my love for you is as big as Chadstone shopping centre, including the carpark!" "Today my love for you is as big as the Pacific ocean" "Today my love for you is as big as the Royal Exhibition Building." (Jason: "Hey, that's not very big!") He told me, "Today my love for you is as big as the shipping yards." "Today my love for you is as big as the spaces between the stars."

Today a patient presented after participating in a 'no-rules' kickboxing match. Apparently the bouts go for 9 minutes- the winner taking home $15 000 and the loser a measly $5000. In this chap's case I don't think the $5000 will begin to cover his rehabilitation costs. But who even knew this type of match happened here in Melbourne?? It sounds like dog-fighting or cock-fighting. Last weekend Jason and I went to see Sifter's Dinge, a Melbourne Festival show (Goebbels) with a fantastic mechanical set and no actors. I suppose it's an audio-visual installation, but presented as a discrete performance- unlike the looped installations more commonly found in galleries. It was enthralling. There were four pianos that played themselves with mechanised arms, a steam-engine type contraption and spooky constructed trees. At the start two 'stage hands' come on to shake some sand into enormous containers. Then they turn on taps of three large watertanks allow...

When did I start watching all this TV?? When I first moved out of home in 2002, we didn't have a TV. In 2004 we got a TV, but the only show I watched was Twin Peaks- which is *practically* film. In 2006 I started watching Six Feet Under, which singlehandedly converted me to TV. Now I watch: -Mad Men -Thirty Rock -United states of Tara -The Wire -Freaks and Geeks I can't even remember them all! I keep telling myself that it's because TV is smarter now, edgier. BUT WHAT IF I'VE JUST BECOME DUMB?? A DUMB AND LAZY COUCH-SITTER?? Excuse me I have some TV to watch.

I have just started a week of night shifts. Seven long nights in a row, but in what other job do you get a full seven days off every 8 weeks?? And it's not all bad- nightshift can be freeing to the mind! As Daniel Kitson described in his awesome show 'It's the Fireworks Talking', staying up all night can make you feel INVINCIBLE!!! Or at least give you the type of meandering, loose-associations-type thought pattern that 9-5 never delivers. Last night on my drive to work I was thinking about the amazing monitoring capability of the intensive care unit. When you first start working with intensive care patients- those in an 'induced coma'- it is completely bewildering trying to figure out if they're okay or not. The senior staff will suddenly become very concerned about one particular patient, who to the casual observer, looks identical to all the other apparently sleeping patients in the intensive care unit. Of course, the senior staff are responding to th...