anaesthetic life!

my latest source of amusement is a magazine called anaesthetic life. it's like women's weekly with a medical spin. it covers topics like: do doctors make poor conversationalists? and there's a surgical life also.

anaesthetics is fun. i haven't learnt as much as i did during my previous option unit, but i've been doing quite a bit of practical stuff. today i was happily chilling in the corner, when the anaesthetist turned to me and said "so your job is to put the drip into the patient".

i know i said that my goal for the year is to put in as many drips as i can, but i was envisioning a less stressful situation than before theatre, with surgeons, nurses, technicians, all waiting and the cost/minute of running a theatre continuing along without any consideration for others at all. so i happily informed him that "uh, well you see, my drip success rate isn't really..."

he bought it. and proceeded to demonstrate "ideal textbook cannulation method". i actually regretted not having a go myself, because when the patient came in i saw that his veins were enormous. typical!

then we decided we could bag-mask ventilate patient one for the entire duration of their procedure (it was a quick procedure). halfway through, my muscles started aching like mad, and i confided in the anaesthetist that i was feeling some major lactic acidosis in my muscles. he volunteered to take over, but i heroically said that i would continue, unless it interfered with my ability to maintain a good seal on the face mask.

so there i was, crouched uncomfortably over the patient, muscles aching, watching the surgeons as they critically evaluated their work. time stretched to infinity. when the surgeon randomly paused and looked up at me, i thought of my pain and how ridiculous the situation was and started giggling like mad. "just some lactic acidosis", the anaesthetist said, by way of explanation. i laughed even harder. the surgeon asked me if i'd snuck myself some laughing gas.

oh, and i also got accused of being a homewrecker. by my supposedly sedated patient, no less! turns out he was less sedated than i had realised, and listening with great interest while i was being harassed by the surgeon. but i forgive him, since he generously allowed me to bring my drip count up to two :)

the sending (update)

So it looks like the sending will be published this year. Of course, the release date was postponed, so I have returned all my lovely bright orange-spined books to their place on my bookshelf. To be resurrected during my rural posting, perhaps?

Fleshing out all threads and the promise of another book, how exciting! Isobelle Carmody really is a faithful author, and for that I am faithful to her writing, haha.

Meanwhile, uni is really tiring me. A combination of long hours, inconvenient transport, and dodgy timetabling. So far, the successful cannula count is -wait for it- ONE. But everybody needs to start somewhere, okay, so don't ask me what percentage hit rate that is.

This afternoon, I will be going to the second installment of a series on biblical manhood, womanhood, and courtship. It's really starting to feel like I am over-intellectualising, or being over-educated on the matter.

And yet, still there is nothing of that elusive beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit (1 Peter 3:4).

what's your goal in life?

this evening, a friend and i were having a conversation over nothing in particular. feeling slightly bored, i decided to throw in a question to make things interesting- as you do. the question i asked was: what's your goal in life?

he was quite taken aback. as was i, when i realised that i didn't really have an answer. how could this be? i reached into all the things that hold up declarations from my past.
- my decision in yr 12 to live the rest of my life filled with passion and compassion.
- a quotation by Erma Bombeck, "When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, 'I used everything you gave me'."
- another decision made at the start of university to be obedient to God's calling for my life.

these are ways of living, yes, but i guess they are not true goals? somehow 2 Timothy 4:7 comes to mind: I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. (NIV)

is it... to be happy? (no.) to have the highest GPA? (no.) to be rich? (no!) to be the best surgeon in the world? (err... no.)

so i wonder, how important is it to have a goal? and does it make any difference between living and existing...?

home/zoo update:
this evening i caved. i was waiting for my family to finish eating dinner so that i could wash up, and asked if there was anything i could do in the mean while. there was- maggie needed to be fed. so i grudgingly got out the mount barker chicken and proceeded to lay bite-sized pieces at his feet. and as for dad, he has decided that maggie is a real loser amongst the birds of our suburb, based on maggie's particularly bad hairstyle. am i alone in finding my parents' personification of a magpie somewhat bizarre?

also, somebody please tell my addled brain to stop spiking cortisol at 4am in the morning. i am not quite sure what the significance of 4am is- midnight in England? morning in Melbourne? is it too much to ask for more than 4.5 hours' worth of sleep/night?

random memory of the day:
walking to clinic with my team this morning, when one of the doctors suddenly pushed me off the path and yelled "shortcut!"

embracing 2011

today is the last day of my summer holidays. which, by the way, extended two weeks into autumn. it has been a very well-paced break, and i am a little sad that it will be over so soon.

tomorrow i start on my my surgery/anaesthesia term, two of my favourite specialities. of course i am excited, but they will be a repeat of terms that i have previously completed. in other words, i would really have loved to be placed on a neurosurgical team instead!

going back a little, 2011 came very suddenly upon us. i was at changi golf club celebrating on new year's eve with my family, when i suddenly realised "oh crap. haven't made a new year's resolution". of course if you make one up on the spot, it is very difficult to remember/keep, so there is no resolution this year.

however, i do have a couple of "boyfriend projects" for the year: jogging and guitar. the term originated in fourth year when i realised that i had a lot of spare time, but nobody to spend it with. my closest friends in university were all in exclusive, time-consuming relationships. i decided that i may as well invest in some hobbies/projects the time that i would otherwise have spent with my boyfriend had i been in a relationship myself. hence the term boyfriend project. at that time i started running a lot also, and playing musical instruments.

in a few months my cohort will be writing job applications. i am thinking about applying to a hospital which is very close to my home. the only problem is that i have not actually been on any real placements in this hospital, so i don't have a good feel for what the hospital is like. it's something i shall have to pray about/think on over the next few months.

it's a pretty scary thought that we are now the seniors of the clinical students. i feel most undeserving, but i suspect that this sentiment will drive self-study in the year ahead. oh, and i am still not good enough at inserting cannulas. i shall make it my personal goal to put in as many as i can this year.

to tame a magpie

hello!

i'm blogging from my beloved laptop, newly fixed by dad. he left me a hilarious note:

Olivia, whoa........what type of font are you using? Anyway, message is the hard drive has been changed to a 500Gig Hitachi, same size and speed as before.
Managed to transfer everything just as before. I've only added a programme called cutepdf writer so that i could convert my roster to pdf format and send to mum.
I don't hear any click click sound from the computer even in the quietude of my room in LAX.
You owe me SGD66,
For being entertained by your computer for the last few days, I'm willing to pay SGD66.
Enjoy, dad

meanwhile, i returned from my travels to find that my mother has adopted yet another animal- this time, a magpie. it's been rather unfortunately (and unimaginatively) named maggie, which is also one of my cousins' nickname.

at first i thought it was just a bit of a joke, but this magpie (i refuse to call it 'maggie') actually waits in the same spot every day. and of course my mother feeds it 5-star mince beef, just as she feeds kaixing 5-star mince beef, and salmon to the (neighbour's) cat. our garden is turning into a zoo.

{taming of the magpie*}

we also have fish, by the way.

*okay, okay, no more lame lit references in this post.