Mad Season

I knew it was the beginning of silly season when the tacky Christmas trees appeared in the foyer of our Emergency Department.

And I don't mean silly seaosn cos of the festivities, but cos of the stupidities.

ED never fails to amaze me as I see bizarre presentations walking through those glass doors.

A young 27 year old male presented to ED in extreme pain. He was swearing profusely, looking very embaressed and had a worried wife with him. Turns out he had injured his male reproductive organ whilst procreating and had heard a 'snap' and immediately rushed to hospital.

Most of the females were trying not to snigger as all the males in the department winced in sympathy. He was urgently given lots of morphine by a nice male doctor as we all tried to work out how once fixes this 'broken' organ.

Eventually the surgical registrar gave him the all clear and we let him go with lots of ice packs and our sympathy.

I then picked up the next patient on the list who had 'high blood pressure'. Turns out this guy had measured his blood pressure at home and it was (*gasp*) 160/100! So he decided he needed to come into Emergency to get it sorted out on a Sunday night. Needless to say I wasn't overly impressed.

But I must say I am really getting into the suturing business. I end up suturing most shifts and enjoy sticking the anaesthetic in and then making nice little stitches in people's severed digits or lacerated heads.

And so after a week of wokring the evening shift, I get two days off before starting the graveyard night shift in ED. It's a token break before sacrificing my sleep-wake cycle on the altar of the public health system.

And so today I got up and had a lazy picnic lunch on the beach with some other doctors who were not working. We ate junk food, we basked in the sun, we argued over the attractiveness of girls passing by and we fought off the leering seagulls. And all of a sudden the weight of work lifted off my shoudlers and I realised that underneath it all, I'm still a person... and I can enjoy life in between the craziness of hospital.

And so tomorrow will be another such day of brunches and shopping and movies....

Ahh.. tis the season to be jolly!