Days of January, evilness and other randoms

Ok... I realize with a shock that this is only my 2nd post for January.

Life sucks...

Life, in fact, is one big suckfest...

I'm doing General Medicine at the moment, am over and done with surgery and being stressed out more than I've ever been in my life. People just come to medical wards and die... they just die like flies and I'm having a hard time getting over it. There have been more deaths in my new ward in 3 weeks than in my old ward in 3 months. It's nothing to do with the ward, admissions to the medical wards are - in a word - buckets (waiting to be kicked). Heart attacks, strokes, alcoholic liver disease and chronic kidney disease. I keep cringing daily at the ominous rattle of the hospital coffins as they carry their cargo towards the mortuary.

I don't finish work until 10 or 11 in the night sometimes. I start my ward round at 5am on some days simply because otherwise there just isn't enough time. After working in a ward with 30 patients, I'm now in one with 65 patients. Ack!

6 months and 3 weeks down... only 5 and a bit to go...

I pray they go fast...

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I have also found a gauge to my evilness....

You Are 34% Evil

A bit of evil lurks in your heart, but you hide it well. In some ways, you are the most dangerous kind of evil.

How Evil Are You?

Hmmmm.... I suppose 34% is not that bad...

Found this on Scrumpy's blog and couldn't resist!

I guess this is where the pitchfork factors in...

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Have realized that all my petty fights and arguments and rants at Darling have centered around food. How pathetic is that? I yell at him when dinner is not ready or breakfast is not what I wanted or when he falls asleep instead of boiling pasta. Darling now claims that I love him only after being fed and watered. Maslow's hierarchy in practice? Maybe...

Dammit, I can't balance being an intern and being a wife... :(

Poor Darling... :(

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I'll be hitting yet another birthday soon... in a couple of weeks, actually. Close to thirty, ovaries ticking away...

Did you know that women who have kids after thirty are more at risk of breast cancer and ovarian cancer? Is it selfish to want kids partly because it reduces ones risk of a nasty illness?

I want to have a family... but I want the two of us to have a decent married life as a couple first. This year just doesn't count...

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Anyway, have to go now... am on-call for the next 3 days... won't be home for a good couple of weeks.

Wish me luck folks...

Anniversary getaway....

So this is the long delayed post about our post-1st anniversary weekend. After me being depressed about work and what not Darling whisked me off to Royal Palms, Kaluthara. It was a lovely weekend and the hotel and the service was absolutely wonderful. I was really impressed by the service... the welcome, the "happy anniversary" decor in the room, the complimentary cake, the candle lit dinner... it was sheer luxury after the brunt of working at hospital.

Darling gets plenty of points for this one! :D

Entrance

Lobby of the hotel - aren't the white elephants gorgeous?

The cake!

Detail of a pettagama in the dining room

Us being all relaxed and happy!

Lobby decor

Oh well...

Kala died last week... was too rushed and too bummed about it to blog. The moment she became "bad" her mother ran to the male ward and I had Mahesh watching me and moaning in the background while I administered CPR. Not fun.

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December 25th Casualty wasn't too bad. The next couple of days were though. However, my best buddy is in SL and I met up with her on Saturday, which was really really good. Let's see how the January 1st Casualty goes... fingers crossed!

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Happy New Year, all! And remember, if you drink, drive and crash your car, you will end up in my ward and I will not be amused. So beware! Don't get behind the wheel unless you're sober! :)

Cheers!

A

Dammit!

My last pair of work shoes broke this morning... I am now faced with the choice of going to work in
a) broken shoes
b) rubber slippers
c) hooker heels

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I'm sorry my last post came out all whiny and self pitying. I'm not the first or the only one to go through this... everyone does it. My Colleague M went home to Mathara today after 5 weeks (and was entirely cheerful about handing over her ward to me).

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So I'm now handling the female ward. Slightly lesser number of patients but full of old achchi's suffering from APR (athe-paye rudha/ anga-patha ridenawa) . Since I've been suffering from APR. meself, I'm a bit more sympathetic than I would have been otherwise. The ward also has Kala*.

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Kala is a 19 year old with a 43% kerosene oil burn - accidental, she claims but the pattern of the burn injury makes us question that. She has a 2 year old daughter and was pregnant with her second child when she was admitted. Her husband Janaka is in my old ward with a "rescue burn"... he has essentially burnt the skin off both hands trying to save her.

Janaka looks a real rasthiyaadu type... dirty teeth, silver earling, breath smelling of stale ciagarettes. He drives a three-wheeler and lives near the place Kala was boarded at a couple of years ago while working at a garment factory. Romance blossommed between the brash sinhala youth and the shy tamil girl. His family was ok with the match... hers opposed it. So they eloped and in true Sri Lankan style, all differences were settled when little Tharushi was born. Kala's family came from Trinco and were living in a house paid for by Janaka.

Janaka had tears in his eyes when he told me how Kala made him tea and stroked his hair untill he fell asleep that fateful night. He was woken up by her screams of agony and had rushed to the kitchen to find her blazing like a torch. He carried Kala with his burnt hands into the threewheeler and then to the Accident Service.

Two days ago Kala developed labour pains and was rushed to DMH where she prematurely gave birth to their second child. She's back in NHSL while the kid is in the PBU.

In Sri Lanka, anything more than a 30% burn injury carried a pretty poor prognosis... i.e. 99% die. Kala has an inhalational injury as well... her lungs have been burn from inside by the kerosene fumes. We're pumping in fluids and plasma and high protien food... but the truth is that she can die any minute.

She scares the daylights out of me.

She's conscious and rational.... her breathing pattern sucks and she knows it. She asks me if she's going to die. Janaka asks me if she's going to die. Her mother asks me if she's going to die. I don't have much to say.

Everytime I leave the ward, I leave in grim anticipation of the call "Doctor, Kala has become bad".

Would appreciate any positive energy you guys can spare to be sent her way.

Last day off...

Literally...

Until sometime after the 7th of January...

I will be working everyday and be on-call every night till then... every weekend and every public holiday too..

Life sucks.

My feet hurt and I have got fairly large, possibly infected callosities on both feet. It hurts to walk. Sometimes I get pains in my feet that make me feel as if they are on fire. They only last a few seconds but sometimes it's difficult to stop from going "ouch" out loud. Maybe I'm getting some kind of neuropathy... maybe it's just that they need a rest.

Three of the guys who were admitted to the last casualty came with the complaint "pain in the big toe". It was hard not to be exasperated... they were eating up time that could have been spent on patients who were much more ill. The Consultant didn't play around... all were sent home with instructions to attend the clinic and get a routine date for surgery, if needed.

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I need new shoes. I started off this job with 6 pairs (2 different designs each in black, white and brown) and now am down to one (ONE!) because the others have all worn out / broken.

I need new clothes because everyday on call = 14 outfits a week. I don't have that many clothes and I can't see myself doing the laundry (or, to be honest, bugging Darling to do the laundry) more than once a week.

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Not much time to surf/blog... you may have noticed fewer and fewer posts... by the time I get home, I'm usually too tired to get Darlings laptop out and trawl the net. All I want to do is to sleep.

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The "season" is upon us and am not really feeling very festive. I'll be doing a casualty on December 25th and on January 1st... :( Did I mention that it's been a year since Darling and I tied the knot? Our first anniversary pic has me in a dressing gown and Darling in his vest, cutting a one pound chocolate cake sent by Brother... the messy kitchen of our apartment is in the background, making me feel guilty whenever I see it.

It wasn't bad... we went to the hotel for dinner and the following weekend (my last off-weekend incidentally) we went out of Colombo (not very far) and just chilled. (details in a post to come...)

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Anyway, I'm just feeling really depressed at the moment.

Sigh...

Luck

There was once this guy, a victim of a blast, not too long ago.

As the fatal explosion occurred, shrapnel entered his body, like it did to others around him. Others died.

The biggest piece that entered his body was a bullet casing that went in through his chest, missed the heart and lungs, missed the great vessels carrying his life-blood, missed the gullet and the windpipe and lodged at the back of his throat.

And all the doctors had to do was to make a small slit and remove it from there.

Two ball bearings also hit his face, neatly entering on either side of his right eye and getting stuck in the skull, leaving his eye - and his vision - intact.

Luck? Good karma?

I don't know... do you?

Have I ever...

Tagged by Sachintha... (though I'm not sure whether it was a I have never or a have I ever tag....) This may turn out to be long and boring but anywez...

Have I ever...

Felt utterly sick and thrown up after drinking 2 sips of peach vodka...

Climbed the Dambadeniya rock using ropes, in the pouring rain and wondered why the heck I was doing so...

Had undiluted passion fruit cordial poured down my bra...

Had my strapless bra come loose somehow and had the cups sticking out under the waist band of my dress like a couple of weird tumours...

Fallen into a swimming pool and nearly drowned (aged 2) and still can't swim...

Learnt Bharatha Natyam (aged 3-5) and then forgotten everything about it (aged 6 to date)...

Run away from home... (aged 11)

Faked a fainting fit in order to attract attention...

Developed meningitis, spent 11 days in a painful red delirium and emerged partially deaf (aged 15)...

Got kissed by a random drunk guy at a party and then slapped him, only to have my hand slither off his sweaty face... (cringe)

Given this totally gorgeous Chilean guy a long and intimate backrub in his hotel room... (Portugal, aged 18)

Got so mad when an A'level exam invigilator criticized the way I was sitting, that I went to her room after the exam and cursed her and her children, that they may never become achievers in life and never know happiness... (it was the Zoology paper, and I got an A)

Had a bunch of dudes in a three wheeler snatch my cap off... then run after the three wheeler, catch up, kick at the rear lights, tear out branches of the pathetic x'mas tree tied to its roof and when they stopped out of sheer desperation, swear at them in a fairly fruity combination of sinhala and english... (Unawatuna, aged 18) (ok, I have anger issues...)

Been so desperately crushing that I'd walk up and down my room, chanting his name over and over like a manthra, willing myself not to call him on a day to day basis because it would look pathetic...

Kissed the same guy while in a moving three wheeler and opened my eyes to wonder how come the Beira Lake looked so dazzlingly blue...

Married the same guy and spent a significant part of the (ahem) first night is a sheer white slip, with my bridal headdress perched on top of my head, jumping up and down saying "I'm married... you married me... we're married...." etc.

Okie... this is turning out to be far too personal.... that's all for now folks! I won't be tagging anyone because everyone and his aunt seem to be tagged already...

Cheers!