Just a quickie, sorry, can a guest blogger have their own guest blogger?

I just wanted to share with you something funny I saw the other day as I was walking home from work:

A man trying to jog and smoke at the same time.

Monday:
Child protection policies, recognition of non-accidental injuries.
I’ve done similar courses in the past, I had to attend something similar before I volunteered at a local playgroup when I was in school and the Red Cross makes all its new volunteers sit a Child Protection Awareness course.

This was different; without doubt the best piece of training I’ve ever seen in my life.

We started off with a quick run down of what child abuse was, whose responsibility it was to deal with and where our remit as Ambulance personnel began and ended. Then the tutor had us pair off and set us all a case study, you arrive at a house and find a child with a greenstick fracture of the forearm. His father says he fell down the stairs, a story the child corroborates. On examination the kid has bruises all over his torso of various ages, he also has a cigarette burn on his shoulder.

What’s your action?
On the whole, we were all in agreement. We’d load father and son into the back of the motor and take them to hospital, there we’d be able to involve Social Services and the Police if necessary. The whole group recognised that our role was not to investigate or accuse, but to pass on and notify. Emotions run fairly high, one classmate points out, rightly, that little kids get hurt and that he’d hate to think he would be suspected of abuse just because his kid had a range of bruises.

The case study continues.
On the way to the hospital, the father asks to see your paperwork. Noticing the concerns you’ve recorded, he demands that you stop the ambulance and gets out, taking his kid with him. He has every right to refuse treatment on a child in his care.

Further discussion, we accept that recording your findings while there’s a chance the parents can see them is unwise and all agree that we would, instead, merely treat the injury we’d been called to, passing the suspicious circumstances onto the hospital staff verbally once we arrived at A&E.

We break for coffee , Dougie, the tutor warns us that, on return, we’ll look at a slideshow of children with non-accidental injuries. He impresses on us that the pictures have a genuine educational quality, they are in no way intended to be sensationalist, but that if people don’t want to come back into the classroom, they should wait outside.

We drink and, as one, return.

There follows 16 images, illustrating the four main types of child abuse (physical, emotional, sexual and neglect). On each, Dougie gives us the history, the story the parents gave for the child’s admittance to hospital. After a while we began to get our eye in, to ignore the rolling of the stomach, the rage, tears and vomit that all threaten to come forth and recognise that the injury simply *couldn’t* be caused like that. The child who “banged her head against the coffee table” apparently lived in a house where the furniture had fingers, their pattern was clearly visible against the soft tissue over her temple.

Similarly, when it came to the shot of the toddlers buttocks and thighs with concentric partial thickness burns, it wasn’t just the implausibility of the story “He was playing on the worktop and sat down on the stove.” that had us questioning the innocence of the boy’s admittance to hospital. There was no question that he’d sat on a hot stove, that much was plainly obvious.

Only one of our number was able to suppress his anger and revulsion sufficiently to analyse the patterns and realise that there were two injuries there. If the parents were telling the truth, the child must have stood up and carefully placed himself back down again on the cookertop.

The last slide was the most telling, it simply read “How do you feel?”
“Sick.”
“Tearful.”
“Violent.”
“Furious.”

“That’s all fair enough.” said Dougie “And perfectly valid and appropriate responses to have. The thing I want you all to ask yourselves though, is ‘Can I perform my duties as an Ambulance Technician in protecting a vulnerable or at-risk child and removing them to a place of safety while feeling these emotions?’

We sat and mulled it over, sharply and brutally made aware of how we might react.

“This is pretty intense, we’ll finish early, see you all tomorrow.”

Tuesday:
Paediatrics, basic life support for children, infants, neo-nates and immediately post-delivery. Fascinating angles on cardiac and respiratory arrest in children (they don’t have years of fat and crap packing their arteries, so rarely enter cardiac arrest through ‘heart attacks’.) and have the point hammered home to us that childrens’ hearts stop beating for a reason. Remove that reason and perform CPR and you stand a damn good chance of hauling them right back into the land of the living.

Tutor G teaches us about shocking kids, how to rapidly guesstimate a child’s weight and then decide how intense a shock you’ll give them with the defibrillator. He blithely mentions “You’ve got to get this right, or you’ll just fry their innards.”
Some of the shocks we can administer (with the defib on ‘manual’ mode - where it stops analysing the heart rhythms and just accepts that you know what you’re doing!) are similar to being lightly punched in the chest.
Must.
Get.
This.
Right.

Wednesday.
Practical exam day!
I swagger into a scenario, see chest pain, decide immediately that it’s cardiac, despite EVERY sign and symptom screaming “muscular”, pump patient full of cardiac drugs and contra-indicated analgesia, do everything too fast, don’t refer to the pocket guide thats in my left thigh pocket (which we’re ENCOURAGED to use in assessments) for any drug information and then, to cap it all, cock up my extrication of the patient.
Kal - Second practical assessment - F.
Ouch.
Debrief runs to “You know your stuff, we know you know it, you know how to examine and make differential diagnoses. Speed is not important, accuracy is everything. Will you slow the fuck down now?”
“Yes sir.”
“That’s fine, as long as learning occurs, we’re happy. Don’t do it again.”

Thursday:
Written assessments, an hour long multichoice and true/false paper and then a two hour “short written” in which we write teeny tiny little essays about a range of subjects. Choose five from the ten, Dougie introduces it “Question two “light rescue procedures” - We haven’t covered light rescue yet, you’re more than welcome to have a bash at it if you REALLY want to, but am I giving you enough of a hint?”

Right at the bottom, question 10, asked for definitions of ten terms, including “anterior” “posterior” “lateral” and “medial”. As Dougie pointed out later on “Look, 20 free points!”

We finish our papers and sit in the coffee lounge, sweating. A fellow student Craig laughs at how we were all asked the same question in our interviews:
“And where do you see yourself in five years time?”
“I’d like to be a paramedic.” We all answered blithely.
At that moment, supping machine brewed coffee and munching on prepacked biscuits, passing paramedic exams was the furthest thing from our minds!

Come the afternoon we were sitting in the computer suite looking for Sesame Street characters (more on this later, I promise) when Dougie came in.

“Right, it’s 3:30, you’re free to study in your rooms, I’m going home.”
“How did we do in our papers?” we asked, as one (an amazing feat of group cohesion, you’ll agree)
“Stop fucking fishing! You’ll get grades tomorrow.”

He left, then turned in the doorway.
“Does anyone have resit tomorrow?”
“Well…we don’t know, you haven’t told us.”
“Have I told anyone that they have a resit?”
“Ummmm, nope.”
“Right. Good night then.”

We let him get down the corridor before we all jumped up and down and whooped and hollered. But I imagine he heard.

After dinner I jumped in the car and went to see the Nerfs. NerfBaby is getting LONG. Not big, but LONG, Nerfgirl and I chatted, Nerfboy supplied good coffee and, at one point, in the same tone of voice as people use in soap operas when they say “Is he beating you?” asked “Do they have a connection at the college?”
When I answered in the negative he thrust a laptop into my hands and I slipped into Gmail. Good friends.
Comment of the night - “I’ve got a lecture on recognition of death in the morning” “How hard can that be? Skeletal face, black cloak, scythe….”

Friday:
Recognition of death: effectively, if they’re rotten, headless, chopped in half or a crispy critter? Don’t bother your arse.
Exams come in at 93% and 97%.

Saturday:
Working at the Royal Highland Show with SMM, we wander around and around, field a couple of lost kids, one of whom, 4 years old and floods of tears genuinely needs help finding a parent and another who dashes into a nearby tent shouting “Mummy! Mummy! A stranger talked to me!”

We get a call for “collapse” at a location, but on arrival find nothing. Notifying control we return to our patrol, only to be recalled for the same collapse, now at a slightly altered locus. On the way a young lad runs up to us.
“There’s a guy passed out over there.”
There’s a beat while we both raise our eyebrows at him. He continues to look between the two of us.
“Well, are you going to show us where then?”
“Oh! Right!” He dashes off and we dutifully follow. There on the grass lies a young man, watched over by a security guard and a host of adolescent girls, he’s in a perfect recovery position. SMM mutters to me “You’re attending, get on with it.”

“Alright folks? What have we got here then? Who put him on his side?”
“Nobody, that’s just how we found him.”

I shout at him, pinch his shoulder, nothing. Pushing his head back and opening his airway I listen for breathing. Nothing.
“Let’s get him over, SMM.”

We roll him over onto his back and I grab an OPA from my bag. Ludicrously, I’ve been qualified to use these for years, I’ve just never had the opportunity. My Ambulance Aid course covered them in the first week, so I’ve had recent practice. I pop it in (it’s true, it IS easier in a real patient, though SMM took the piss out of me for how violently my hand trembled before I put it in!) and relisten. The youngster breathes in and out easily, we body check him up and down, continuing to shake him awake. He ever so slowly comes round, tells us his name, claims to be 18 (though his driving licence puts him as born in 1990), lists the drinks he’s had that day and then vomits copiously. Strawberries, cream, smoked sausage supper.

I look up at the kid who found us first.
“What’s your name, mate?”
“Mark.”
“Right Mark, we’re going to call for a buggy to come pick this guy up, go and watch out for it and bring it here when it turns up, right?”

He nods and dashes off, leaving us chatting to our punter who occasionally wakes up enough to beg us not to tell his Dad he’s drunk. His head lolls on his chest, his legs like jelly.
I look up at SMM - “He’s never going to ride in a buggy, you want to radio for a motor?”
He nods, I tell one of the teenage girls nearby to go and get Mark, who duly returns, wide eyed and afraid, I fear he’s been told “The first aid man wants to talk to you.”
“Mark, mate, see how you’re looking for a golf buggy?”
“Yeah.”
“Well you’re looking for an ambulance now, ok? Same deal, once they arrive, bring them here.”
His chest inflates and he dashes back to his position, returning after a few minutes with two green suits, colleagues of SMM from his station. We huckle the drunk lad into the back of the motor, using the time honoured “hands under the upper arms and grab his belt” method of drunk huckling. SMM shouts over his shoulder “Mark, pick up our bags.”

Having removed our gloves and handed over to the crew, we step out of the back of the vehicle to find Mark two steps behind us, our kits firmly in sticky fists, with us like shit on a blanket. He beams as we clap his shoulder, tousle his hair and I tell him if we had a medal, I’d give it to him. We leave him with his mates, noticably taller.

Seeya next week.

Kal

PS. Special hello to Jamie from the Borders, who collared me in the mess room at the RHS and after chatting for awhile, narrowed his eyes and said “Do you write a blog….?”

PPS. To the L.A who called me “Kal” at the college last week, drop me a comment if you’re reading, ok?

We haven’t had any lyrics for a while, so here’s “Anyone Else But You” by the Moldy Peaches

You’re a part-time lover and a full-time friend.
The monkey on your back is the latest trend.
I don’t see what anyone can see in anyone else,
But you.

I kiss you on the brain in the shadow of a train.
I kiss you all starry eyed, my body swings from side to side.
I don’t see what anyone can see in anyone else,
But you.

Here is the church and here is the steeple
We sure are cute for two ugly people.
I don’t see what anyone can see in anyone else,
But you.

Pebbles forgive me, the trees forgive me.
So why can’t you forgive me?
I don’t see what anyone can see in anyone else,
But you.

I will find your niche in your car.
With my MP3, DVD, Rumble-Pak Guitar
I don’t see what anyone can see in anyone else,
But you.

Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, Start.
Just because we use cheats doesn’t mean we’re not smart.
I don’t see what anyone can see in anyone else,
But you.

You are always trying to keep it real.
I’m in love with how you feel.
I don’t see what anyone can see in anyone else,
But you.

We both have shiny happy fits of rage.
You want more fans, I want more stage.
I don’t see what anyone can see in anyone else,
But you.

Don Quixote was a steel driving man.
My name is Adam, I’m your biggest fan.
I don’t see what anyone can see in anyone else,
But you.

Scrinched up your face and did a dance.
Shook a little turd out of the bottom of your pants.
I don’t see what anyone can see in anyone else,
But you.

But you….

Monday - Basic life support, cardiac anatomy and physiology. Got it, pipes and chambers, no hassle, pumpy pumpy, squirty blood, air goes in and out, claret round and round.

Tuesday - Electrical conductivity of the heart…ohhhhhkay. This is new, sparky sparky heart? Crackly electricity? Purkinje fibres? Keeping up, just. Lunch.
ECGs. What? Electrical views of the heart? I can hardly tell you when an ECG looks normal, how the hell am I meant to know when it’s NOT normal? And from what angle? Einthoven’s Triangle? What? I don’t understand!
All is made clear by Dougie the lecturer who marches us into the next classroom and has us sit, stand or lie down in a roughly spherical configuration. “You’re now electrodes. This ball is the heart, the wee dot is the heart attack. Person 1, can you see the heart attack?”
We work our way around the room, each ‘electrode’ telling Dougie whether they can see the heart attack. All becomes clear.

We return to our room, sit down and he hammers us with more theory, a rolling tsunami of information.

Finish, retire to rooms, sulk.

Sitting in the bar that evening, my DTO (Divisional Training Officer) happens to stroll up, he’s down at College teaching another course.
“Alright Kal? How’s it going?”
“I’m shit-scared!”
“And this is new because…?”
I stick my tongue out at him and return to my pint, he pulls up a chair.
“What’s up?”
“I don’t understand any of this stuff, there’s so much to take in.”
“You don’t need to memorise it all, just have a good understanding.”
“Yeah, but I don’t even have that.”
“Ok, acid test. Can you put the leads on someone?”
“Yes.” I frown. A trained monkey could put the leads on, that’s the easy bit.
“And you know about the chest leads?”
“Yup.”
“Can you recognise your rhythms? NSR, ST, SB, VT, VF, PEA and Asystole?”
“Well…yeah, they’re easy.”
“That’s it mate, you’ve just passed cardiology, the rest is just “nice to knows”"
I grin, return to my pint, relax.

Wednesday - Stroll in to class, light and air beneath my heels. Long day of ECG interpretation and introduction to cardiac drugs. Instructor leaves us at 4pm with “Oh, you’ll have a drugs progress paper in the morning.”
Study my drugs all night.

Thursday - Progress paper laid out in front of us, just blank paper, no question, no headings.
“Write your name at the top with today’s date, please number your answer sheets.”
“Ummmm. What’s the question?”
“I want drug information for aspirin, oxygen, GTN and entonox. Presentation, action, indications, contra-indications, cautions, dosage, administration and further information for all of them please.”
No problem, we got the same question for Salbutamol last week, 30 minutes to reproduce, parrot fashion, what we’ve been studying all night.
“You have half an hour. Go.”
There’s a rustle through the class, a hand goes up.
“Yes?”
“Is that half an hour per drug?”
“Nope. That’s for all four of them.”
“We got 30 minutes for one drug last week.”
“Life’s a shit isn’t it?” He glances at his watch. “And you’ve just wasted a minute.”

Wrist cramps, pens smoulder, more paper is requested.

We finish, papers are marked. 95% - eythangyew.

Friday - After a brief chat about shock, we’re sent out to complete our chores, vehicle cleaning, disposal of clinical waste, restocking kit bags.
While scrubbing the side of an ambulance a student from the concurrent driving course walks over.
“Why are you doing that? We just cleaned these.”
“Because we were told to.”
“Pffft!”
A colleague of mine marches back to the classroom to remonstrate with the instructor and is sent back with a flea in his ear and the barked order “Because I said to!” still echoing around his skull.

After lunch I head back home, stopping off at Occupational Health on the way; they’ve been threatening me with a medical for weeks and I’ve been sphincter rigidly dreading it, thinking they’ll strip back my shirt and find a little barcode that says “Fire me.” on my chest.
But no, it turned out it was a friendly chat and a barrage of medical incompetence.

“Hmmm, eye sight, right, well, I see you wear glasses…we should probably do a sight test, but…I mean, can you see ok?”
“Yes.”
“That’ll be fine.”

“Flexibility and movement, oh, there’s a lot here, can you just move around a bit?”
“Excuse me?”
“Just stand in the middle of the floor and, you know, move about.”
I stand and do my best grand-dad dancing, bobbing my knees up and down, waving my hands, I was tempted to bigfishlittlefishcardboardbox, but thought it wouldn’t be proper.
“That’s lovely.” She rapidly ticks a list of boxes, I glance over her shoulder they read “Lifts left leg independently.” “Lifts right leg independently.” and “Lifts both legs independently.”
I never levitated, I hope that won’t be a problem.

Next came blood pressure, which she failed to take twice, before I pointed out that the brachial artery is usually on the inside of the arm and not just above the elbow.

Finally a wee blood test, she poked and prodded, muttering “I think that’s a vein…” before hammering a needle into my arm, ramming it back and forth and saying “Is that hurting? If it hurts, it’s probably not in a vein.”
She gave up after a while, pulled it out (glaring at the tiny ooze of capillarial bleeding that followed “Oh, there’s blood now.”) and said “Well, never mind, just get your GP to send me a letter saying that everything’s ok, alright?”

And with that she was gone, leaving me to head off to a party in town that evening and meet the girl with the depth of a rammekin. At one point she declared, without a hint of irony, “I’m the best person here, because I’ve met the most stand-up comedians.”
We spent a good 20 minutes arguing over who’d seen the most moose (Ask me one day about “I’ve seen moose.”) in front of her, but I don’t think she really followed along.

Then a drive home, laughing at the drunk man who tried to support himself on a flexible anti-crash Keep Left bollard which promptly folded under his weight and dropped him face first to the asphalt. Outside my flat, a pissed woman was imploring passers by to join her in singing “I Think We’re Alone Now.” and as I drifted off to sleep I could still hear her caterwauling “Children behaaaaaayyyyyyve” down the street.

Ah well, exams this week, it’s now sunday evening and I’m sitting like a little stress puppy.
See you on Friday

Kal

From my instructors:

On manual handling - “Think about lightening your load, or breaking it into smaller parts. Say you’re moving a crate of beer; drink twelve of them and you won’t give a fuck.”

On heavy patients - “Not all of your punters will need this, I mean, you wouldn’t break it out for your wee auld woman who’s five and a half stone with her wellies full of pish…”

On exams - “We do not give points for writing “reassure” on your patient management plans. Your very presence should reassure, your badge should reassure, your skills should reassure. If they don’t, there’s the door.”

On the three P’s - “What are the three P’s?”
“Promote recovery, prevent further injury, preserve life.”
“Wrong! Pick ‘em up, pack ‘em in, piss off.”

Ok, I said there’d be some content to keep you going in between Kal’s rather marvellous weekend posts, so here it is.

I first ‘met’ Kal when Chasing Daisy mentioned Trauma Queen (or rather, the Livejournal version) on her blog, saying that I might like it as we were both librarians. I merrily clicked through and had a read, enjoying it, then discovering we had more in common than being librarians, we had both spent our childhoods in Orkney, Kal on the small island of Papa Westray and me on the so-called mainland of Orkney (as did Kal for a while) in Stromness. A year ago I moved up to Edinburgh for work, met Kal for real and now we undertake lots of sensible grown up activities like drinking coffee in graveyards and having dinner parties.

Anyway, the point of all this is that for my guest posts I’m going to tell you a little about my childhood in Orkney. I can’t regale you with blood, guts and gore and tales of my nieces and nephews (mainly because I don’t have any) but I can tell you a bit about island life. This week, Grandad Gray.

Grandad Gray was not my real grandad but as his son and daughter-in-law are like second parents to me I suppose he was something of a grandad figure, particularly as my own lived down in England. A former sea captain, he was a big man (especially to a small child) but he had a heart of gold. He was also quite creative in his way of life:

• Rather than paint ‘No parking’ on his garage door, he let people know why they couldn’t park there with ‘My car is inside’.
• It’s very windy in Orkney. To prevent his car doors flying open, Grandad Gray put cement on the insides to weigh them down.
• In the later years of his life he lived in sheltered housing. One night he woke up to hear the smoke alarm going off in his flat, which obviously disturbed him. At first he couldn’t see if there was a fire so he took the batteries out of the smoke alarm so it would be quiet. Then he discovered that it was some furniture that was on fire. Rather than take advantage of living in a sheltered flat and calling the warden for assistance, he dragged it down to the pier opposite and chucked it in the sea.
• We went on a family trip back to Orkney in 1993 and managed to take a particularly bad ferry trip over (why I now fly there, never mind the cost), which made most of us sick. As the sailor, Grandad Gray was eager to offer his tip for seasickness on the way back: swallow a raw egg so that it moves in your stomach as the boat moves, making you less likely to throw up. I have to say we didn’t try it, but more fool us if he was right.

I wish I could recall more about Grandad Gray; he was an important figure in my childhood. I often wish I could have known him as an adult when I would have appreciated his stories more, but hey, kids are kids!

Katherine
Chatiryworld

Or “Oh Fuck It’s Sunday” as, I think these posts will become known.

Monday - Marched into lecture room, one of fifteen new students, eleven of whom are already in SAS as non-emergency workers. Forget to take my ’subservient Supreme Court worker’ hat off and call instructor “sir”. Get piss ripped out of me for the rest of the afternoon.
Given a ‘fear of god’ lecture about conduct while in uniform (no hands in pockets, no swearing, neat hair, clean shaven etc.)

Move onto Manual Handling and Patient Movement, sliding people back and forth into and out of beds, on and off trolleys, avoiding lifting wherever possible. Am immediately marked out as the ‘heavy’ one.

“Pulling this trolley into the back of the vehicle, even with a large patient on board, is really easy with the winch. Watch this. Kal? Get on the trolley.”

Tuesday - More manual handling, then onto basic anatomy and physiology. C-SYS (thanks Calum) biology comes flooding back, realise that all those hours of understanding diffusion, semi-permeable membranes and concentration gradients was worth it. Write lists of organs and tissues found in different body cavities, one colleague claims a point for every cavity by suggesting “Major blood vessels” - nickname one is applied - “Major”.

Wednesday - Respiratory anatomy, physiology and pathology. Learn more about the lungs than I thought I’d ever know. Introduced to oxygen, peak flow meters (for measuring exhalation capacity) and ‘basic airway adjuncts’. I’ve been able to use oral pharyngeal airways for a few years now, they’re useful wee tubes to stuff in people’s mouths when they’ve blacked out. They stop the tongue slipping back and occluding the airway, but are useless if your patient’s jaw is locked shut.
Am trained to lube up a long rubber tube and stuff it up patient’s nose, lecturer explains their use in resuscitation, but also points out how useful they can be to ‘test’ someone’s level of unconciousness. Apparently it’s very hard to feign being blacked out when someone’s shoving a hose up your schnozz.

Come the end of the afternoon we’re introduced to Salbutamol, a drug used to expand contracting airways in cases of respiratory distress. “Copy out the drug sheet for Salbutamol.” they said and so we did. SItting at our desks, sunshine streaming in the windows, we relax, scribbling away at our pads. The instructor comes back in.
“Are you finished?”
“Ummmm, nope.” we reply as a whole.
“Well get writing, this is serious. That’s a prescription only drug, you can’t just go and buy it at the fucking chemist, it requires a health care professional to give it to you and if they give it to the wrong person you’ll end up fucking dead. Now get fucking writing!”

Suitably chastised, we set to.

Thursday - Salbutamol exam first thing. Thank God for bollockings!
That afternoon we got to play with various pieces of equipment for hauling patients up and downstairs, my favourite was the “Stryker Rugged” a hornet striped aluminium wheelchair with enormous caterpillar tracks that flipped out of the back to convert it into a sledge that skidded down steps with nary a lift. Disgustingly American in it’s appearance, methodology and attitude, but damn it looked cool, a little like a cross between a mobility aid, JCB and an electric chair.
Fuck yeah

Friday - Infection control lecture, which, while very informative and useful, consisted largely of the lecturer printing out her Powerpoint presentation, giving us copies of the 40-odd slides, then projecting the same information onto the screen and reading it out to us.
Lunch, tutorials (85% in my Salbutamol exam, that’ll do me) and comments on my training record that effectively say “Mr Traumaqueen has only been here a week, I have no idea what he’s like as a student, but I have to put something in this box.”

I’m leaving for the college again in 45 minutes or so, seeya on Friday!

Hi, this is Katherine from Chatiryworld, Kal asked me to guest blog last weekend and whilst I can’t speak for the others, let me assure you there will be some content here soon, so don’t give up!

If Kal lets me guest blog, do you think he would let me guest Flickr and borrow his snazzy camera…? Maybe not, he’s seen what a klutz I am.

Take your nausea, your flipflopping heart and the heated optic needles.
Screw them to the sticking place.
Pack your bags.
And do it.

You *can* do it.
So do.

I’ve invited some friends to guest blog, folks, as I’ll not be around during the next nine weeks. Will try to run a sort of “TGIF” theme, updating once I’m home from Nambulance school at weekends.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to pack my tuck box.

I’m now in my last hour of working for the Supreme Courts, I’ve had some lovely presents, some merciless ribbing for the crawling letter I sent to the Judges and had a wee photoshoot…I mean, c’mon, when ELSE am I going to get the chance to do this?!

My friends bought me a lovely Littman steth to start my training with, I’ve been given a red-kneed tarantula (stuffed!) and some nice books from my boss and I’ve been suspiciously removed from the “all users” email list from the start of this week.

People keep coming in and going “4 here, then 4:30 in the pub,, right?”

I haven’t a clue, but I think I might be getting a carriage clock!