..i miss having broadband. have just been on the neonatal unit ward round, and will soon have to get on my bike for the uphill cycle to the sick childrens hospital for a neurology tutorial.
have signed 6 months of my life away - surgical job in high wycombe . nice to know the locals are much enamoured of their fair town. oops better go seeing as my fitness level has plummeted since A&E.

hmm. this (blogging) is mildly addictive. the unashamedly left-leaning channel 4 news had a feature on Equatorial Guinea yesterday. They interviewed a sweaty Scots oilman in a short-sleeved shirt and sandals. "This'll be the next Kuwait," he said with visible glee, "or Singapore". Cut to an interview in Spanish with the rather flashily dressed president (read: dictator who seized power by executing his uncle). 'What you see as poverty, is our culture,' the translator says flatly. 'We have... shortages.' there were several things that disturbed me about this bulletin. first, the intended point - that the great and good of the democratic world should be doing business with (to put it over-simply) a dodgy administration. second, that the producers of channel 4 news should have used the (clearly misinformed) quote 4 times in the space of 30 minutes. i suppose there's a tiny bit of loyalty toward Singapore in me yet.

15 minutes til i have to get on my bike and head to the 'lunchtime lecture'. despite the hospital being about 5 minutes' cycle away (3 of those minutes spent getting across a busy junction), these lecture slots can feel pretty inhumane - 8am (cruel when its as dark and cold as it is at this time of year), 5pm, and now lunchtime. ...well, to be entirely honest i think its mainly to do with my lack of volition. am having to fight the 'just want to curl up and die' feeling. broke up with M on friday - we'd been going out since the beginning of 2001, so i suppose a mourning period is justified. paediatrics is not at all a good module to assuage the pain - i am ashamed to say i have even felt jealous of the poor parents hanging about the ward. the fact that many marriages do not survive a disabled/dying child notwithstanding.

having delivered 3 babies, examined a dead woman, done chest compressions, sat with suicidal patients and so on, one would have thought that it would put my own problems in perspective. i guess (depending on how you look at it) its either a horribly selfish streak or a vital self-preserving streak that keeps alive the belief which i can only express as "the worst possible problem is the one i've got".

..having barely got to grips with xanga, here i am. and here's my old site , which is full of my A&E ramblings. to continue where the last blog left off, Berlin was cool - the Berlin philharmonic, the Wall, Jazz festival, unexpectedly friendly natives, frequent night trains, fantastic architecture - and LiDL. "the Germans obviously have no regard for British tastes," commented a sunday times magazine writer on a London branch of the (East) German supermarket chain, "apart from our taste for cheap groceries." Berlin food is nothing to write home about, consisting largely of assorted wursts - the Curry Wurst being the most (in)famous. if you ever try one, be sure to wash it down with Gluwein - homemade, partially fermented grape juice, scaldingly hot and invariably served in a dodgy disposable plastic cup. randomly met Sir Simon Rattle on the plane back to Heathrow on Saturday - and starstruck, asked for his autograph. "I was at your concert on Thursday," I said - wondering if i should mention that we'd queued for an hour to get standing tickets for 10 Euros. "I really enjoyed it." This had been helped in no small measure by the amazing acoustics of the stadium-sized Berlin philharmonic hall, and a remarkably well-behaved audience. "Thank you. I'm glad you did," he said. He scribbled in a self-portrait as well.

Paediatrics week 1

Paeds (particularly in a hospital setting) differs from adult medicine mainly in the degree of tragedy. Although none of us is without fault, with grown-up patients its almost too easy to think - they've smoked 30 a day from the age of 8, they go through several bottles of vodka a week - there's always something. maybe they are 80 and have had a full life. one of the Critical Care consultants remarked: "a VF arrest at the 9th hole, where no-one would find and resuscitate me, that's how i'd like to go." we've all got to die somehow. just not before the age of 21. I'm on a neurology ward, which is full of long-stayers. On the ward round, a nurse says to an 8-year old "i've just been on the phone to your teacher, she says she'll bring your maths homework in for you." child pouts, thinks about it for a while, then smiles. i guess homework is vaguely comforting when you've got a brain tumour. there are 3 kids with brain tumours on the ward, all bright, articulate children.
we (med students) have been discouraged from talking to them, though i can't think why. it really annoys me to think that nurses and so on probably think they are protecting either us or the patients/families from something (what?) when the truth is that the more we don't speak to dying patients now, the more we are going to fumble next August when we are let loose on the unwary public. anyway...
in keeping with the mantra of 'learning by doing', i stayed late today to help clerk in a surgical admission. J is a one-year old with plagiocephaly - i.e. 'lop-sided head'. the sixth of seven children - mom and dad are young, unmarried, unemployed council-estate dwellers, J is a cheery tot. he seeks out the noisiest toys in the ward playroom. its amazing how much of the examination is done just by looking - though obviously, you need to know what you are looking for. it still feels like i'm 'stopping and starting' with the history, but i suppose i'll have it all on the tip of my tongue by the end of next week.

just noticed that most of my photographs have one thing in common - (and no, its not that they're black and white) - they are devoid of intimacy. Desolate urban landscapes, castles, beautiful mountains and lochs, backs of people's heads, close-ups of plants, the odd cat or dog, italians, tourists, berliners, homeless edinburghers, all shot from afar. and token pic of mom and dad. whereas the average person's album is perhaps poorer in technical quality, but much richer in human intercourse - flatmates, folk from the judo/ballroom dancing/xtreme sports etc club, random people at a drunken party, family, maybe even some proper friends.