10 year olds should be banned from playing football!

*sigh*

long day, but not a bad day.

0645h - 0050h after midnight.

a day full of kiddies

*beams*

one kid after another with broken bones.

wait a sec, that didn't come out right. 

anyway, besides our ortho kiddie patients, there was literally a busload of elementary school kiddies from melbourne and the majority of them landed in our ED with gastro. don't want to sound mean but it was kinda funny seeing the whole waiting room flooded with little kiddies in their school uniforms. thought it was a school outing at first until i saw a few of them holding little puke bags. the kiddie ward nurses were uber stressed lol. nearly 30 kids in one shot!

long day, but not a bad day.

0645h - 0050h after midnight.

but you know what.. if i hadn't stayed back, i wouldn't have run into an old friend, G,  from med school

'twas nice to see a familiar face =)

she does it again

i can't believe it. looks like i'm the official S-magnet.
she's gone off to a different hospital for the time being, yet still manages to get me in trouble and pisses me off from afar. now, that's what i call a pro. she does it again. and yes, prepare for my rambles again too.

......

i think it's completely inappropriate, and in my indignation, whinged to a few of the nurses that were unlucky enough to be nearby about it all just to get it out of my system. how fair do you think it is, and how professional would you rate it if you came in with some neurovascular compromise, losing sensation in your hands from a fracture.. or needed to go to the operating theaters to have your macerated, bleeding hand washed and explored and find that you can't have your injuries fixed because they've scheduled a 29 year old guy who was hungover, decided to jump over a concrete block but failed and cut his shin down to bone in front of you. the guy's otherwise fine, walking on his injured leg and denying pain. yet, he gets to go to the operating theaters ahead of you because, well.. he's going out with one of the doctors.

so yah. the boyfriend showed up to our ED. S called to ask my senior registrar to give him the vip treatment. couldn't get through and called me instead. !@#!#$@. i hate being cornered like that.

S had said he was being triaged in ED, and if i could make sure he gets treated correctly and if i would go see him later when i had time. in my head, i was thinking "later, definitely". after all, i figured that if the nurses were triaging him, they would know how bad his injury was.. and if it was bad enough, they would give me a call to review sooner or later. plus, i had just been assigned to procure all the scans this one patient had so i could email them to another specialist up in sydney. for those of you who have no idea how hard it was to extract all images from the guy's CT, MRI, ultrasound and plain films from the computerized xray system to something sendable by email.. it was fricking time-consuming!! thank goodness for irfanview =) and that was half the battle. the other half was to contact this specialist i've never met to ask him to look at these films for us. honestly, wouldn't blame him for asking "and just who in the world are you again?" .... oh, and then to be bombarded by calls every 5 - 10 minutes from the rest of the hospital, ED and GPs from all over the state at the same time. frankly, i didn't have time to go see S's boyfriend.

so, i was there trying to sort this guy with his gazillions of images out and i get a call from my senior reg. she happens to be good friends with S and finally got S's message about the bf. i nearly lost it when my senior reg told me to go and see the boyfriend in ED now "as a matter of priority". that phrase is so gonna irk me to pieces like how bush's "war on terror" catch-phrase irked a few people. i could hear my volume dial up a few notches and the pitch rise a bit as i slowed my words down and enunciated quite slowly to my senior reg as she was deaf and stupid that "i know he is in ED but i am sorting out the abscess guy for our boss, and i will see the boyfriend as soon as i can afterwards." it was enough to get the attention of the guy sitting next to me at the computers who turned and introduced himself as the consultant of the team we were dealing with. man, he must've thought i was some hot-headed arrogant orthopod in training after hearing my tone of voice =( i was so appalled and embarrassed..

so anyway. yah. i survived. i feel mean and i like it, just at this moment. i feel mean deriving happiness from the knowledge that there's some justice in the world because two such horrible people had managed to find each other. i had to take a history from the boyfriend and book him into theaters for his wound washout. his wound was the size of a 20 cent piece. yah. that's more important and urgent than that macerated hand with cuts all over it with blood dripping down. right. sorry, i digress. i haven't quite swallowed the whole bitter pill yet, you see - getting bossed around by a senior registrar i don't respect, having to choose between professional duty and not offending the senior, having to even have to see the loser boyfriend at all... i know what the right thing to do is, and i know i'll get into trouble if i do the right thing. that's the bit that irked me the most. knowing that S got with a loser made the bitter pill a bit easier to swallow... not only does he smoke, but is also a pisshead. the idiot was drunk after 10 pints of beer last night and felt it would be appropriate to tell me he's still hungover at 5pm the next day. *points to an imaginary level above my head* respect. *points to the spot under my shoes* where S and her bf stand.

gnaaarrgh. it just really really gets to me though i know i shouldn't let it. i'm all about following the principles. any principles. life principles would be nice. it infuriates me to no end that people with more urgent injuries get delayed treatment just because this one loser had a girlfriend who happened to work in the field his injury fell into, and so happened to know the senior reg working that day who was just as pushy, arrogant and inconsiderate as his girlfriend who would find that bossing the junior registrar and delaying other people's treatment sat well on her conscience. it sucks to come back to reality.

and here we go again

what doesn't kill me

will only make me stronger

the chin just needs to stay up

just a tiny bit longer

i don't know yet

if what's done was right

to have gone home

or stay to fight

it was one of the most

difficult things i've had to do

but a decision was made

and i'll stick to it like glue

for if i don't,

i really do fear

i'll lose my sanity

and things i hold dear

so with a glint

in my eye

i return to my hell

and pray i won't die

hoping to leave the cranky pants behind

so my computer clock tells me it's 10.52 at night.
and i have a few things to get off my chest before i head back to the hospital

indulge me, yet again.. for i suspect i'll be ringing in my 30s talking to a middle aged alchoholic who choked on a roast dinner yesterday and has been sent to ED from whoopwhoopland.

politics
already whinged about bin laden. done, dusted. now onto the political scene in singapore.
political awareness is one thing, falling back into sheep mentality is another. nicole seah is good, tin pei ling is bad. if one is in, the other is out. black and white. one or two. that seems to be the general consensus via everyone and their uncle's facebook musings over the past few weeks. well, tell me then. what's so good about nicole seah? when asked about her experience in politics and policy making during one interview (or lack of, as she joked), she answered like she was sitting for a camp counsellor interview. sorry little lady. what you do in secondary school and what you call "community service" isn't unique to just you. hell, everyone had to do it. our class went to help out old folks and took them to east coast park for a bbq! does that mean all of us have what it takes.. hang on, why were you talking about community service anyway when the question was about your political experience? seriously, what about the idea that neither is good? what about option three? or five?

work
shut up, do your job and don't take me for granted. i will have a word to my resident tomorrow for refusing to chart up post-op antibiotics for all our patients today because it wasn't her job. bullshit. stop telling me the same thing five different times by five different people. stop telling me i have to see such and such patient. i don't have to, not if they haven't been properly seen by ED. stop pointing out the obvious to me. i KNOW the kid walking from ED to the elevators with his arm in a backslab and sling is MY patient going up to the kiddie ward. i have eyes that work, you know. there's only one ortho reg on one ortho team in the hospital. it's not that hard to work it out. start telling me stuff that matters, like patients you've accepted for transfers to our hospital. especially ones that are non-orthopedic because, well, they don't show up on my patient lists and it's very annoying to be called about patients supposedly under my care i don't know about! i'll just call you and ask you what the plan is, at one am in the morning. how about that?

life
you know what? nothing immediate =D the hubbs tells me lublub at just the right times when i think i need the emotional support. the hubbs is making the effort and that's all that counts. the family is generally ok. able to talk more to the dad. working on it. the only worry would be my maternal gramps - icu for a month now. not sure what's going on as info i'm getting is through my parents. gist of it was some sort of intracranial bleed post fall and now still has a gcs of 3, tubed. worried. didn't help over easter weekend. the hubbs made some of it go away. coping better.

so they say he's dead. and now what?

whoopdedoo, he died.
so what?

yes, it might sound like a very good excuse reason to party and it definitely is a huge boost for morale and patriotism (how convenient is the timing of the news in relation to everything else that's going on in the world.. the fighting in the middle east/political unrest, the elections in the states, etc?), but if you take the time to think it through, it boils down to "so what?"

do you think that because bin laden is "dead" (how many times have we heard that before in the past decade?), that all of this horrible mess they call terrorism will go away? that his supporters, or any enemies of his enemies, will suddenly snap out of it and rescind all they believe in and/or fought for all these years? that the world will now automagically be full of sunshine and rainbows?

so what?
was it worth the manpower, the further deaths after 9/11, the effort and the time of countless people across the world that was spent over the past decade looking for this one man when it was well known that he had legions of followers and supporters at his beck and call? wouldn't all of that have been better used for other causes? some community out there must have surely been deprieved of basic food and shelter at some point during the past decade. some sick kid out there needed a gazillion-dollar surgery to save their life must have surely been in existence during the past decade. you get my drift..

so i may come across as callous to those who have been affected by 9/11. i can honestly say i will never be able to truly comprehend the amount of grief, anger, hurt and other emotions experienced by this group of people but hearing the stories, and merely the mention of the date sends chills down my spine still. yet, placing myself in the shoes of someone who had lost family or friends during 9/11 as best as i can, i cannot come up with a reason to go out there and party like there's no tomorrow just because they say bin ladin is dead. at best, i can heave a great big sigh that something has been done, that closure has been achieved. and then i would start worrying about the repercussions of the news. i would think that the harder the party-goers party, the more the gloaters gloat, the more angry the supporters and family of bin ladin will get.. which could possibly translate to something more vicious for everyone else that doesn't belong to "them" ... so, all the more reason not to party, whoop and celebrate but instead, spend the time reflecting in my own private domain and  enjoying the closure.