"Waiting to be killed... waiting to be killed"

Today's post title is brought to you today by the indie film "Thumbwars" in which an anthropomorphified thumb imitating a rebel starship commander looks around and waits for the Darth Vader figure to come and kill him.

It's a cry of bordeom from a digitially enhanced film character and yet it has nothign really to do with life other than I am bored.

Bored in a good way!

Last 2 days have been very different.

Day 1 - (ie Yesterday) having 2 patients on the ward meant I had nothing to do. It also meant that because Boss A was operating with the reg, that Boss B needed a theatre assistant for a nephrectomy. And so the lucky intern who had nothing to do got to scrub in and take the reg's spot in the far more interesting surgery.

However, somehow anaesthetics took a long time to get a central line in so Boss B and I sat by ourselves for 2 hours waiting for them to get the patient on the table. Boss B also happens to be my term supervisor so everything I say to him must be said with utmost caution so as to not detract on my assessments. So there we were trying to make small talk (which is difficult enough at the best of times) whilst he is getting visibly impatient at the delay in surgery.

"So are you into sport at all?" I asked, going for the safe topic option.

"No not really" ("Damn" I thought!)

We ended up chatting about travel options in Queensland (as one does) and the political situation between Taiwan and China.

Eventually we got into theatre and I got to use the vacuum cleaner (sucker) and help stitch the wound closed. There was lots of pus in the abdomen which kinda looked like chicken soup as it all came pouring out when we made the incision... not very nice!

Then before I had a chance to get lunch I was called to the other set of theatres to admit a GP's father (who of course gets 'special' treatment cos he's a GP's father and only had 1 partially functioning kindey in acute renal failure) but we were awaiting the blood results to make sure he wasn't hyperkalaemic, when we got a phone call from the lab saying the specimen was haemolysed.

No problem I thought. I'll quickly take 2 more EUC tubes and send them thru the chute immeadiately with "Super-Urgent" marked on the form.

1 hour later still nothing. I called and they made some excuse about not knowing where the tubes were. 1.5 hours later the understandably cranky anaesthetist calls up the lab and abuses them only to find out they have 'lost' BOTH of the specimens I sent them. Needless to say there was an IIMS ( Incident Managment Something-or-other) report involved.

Day 2 - today

Reg A was away today doing some rural clinic in Inbredsville and Boss A had flown off to Hong Kong to talk to the Asians about incontinence.

Therefore Reg B was the only one on and Bosses B to D had had all their theatre lists cancelled (thru some admin stuff up)

Reg B presented a talk on vasectomies (always fun to hear about early in the morning) and quoted a journal discussing the 'taste' of post-op pt's 'products'.

After the morning meeting, I was invited to go and "see some scrotums" with Reg B and then had the rest of the day to myself.

Was about to leave hospital when Boss D paged me urgently. I was a bit worried. Would he spoil my day? Did he need an operating assistant? Was I about to get into trouble for not ordering some CT?

"Dr J, I just wanted to ask you a question. Did Reg B REALLY say that it tastes the same post-op?"

"Um apparently that's what the journals say?"

"Thanks bye!"

[dial tone - call ended]