Stolen Bin

On Monday, we had our rubbish bin go missing. It was there in the morning when all of us left the house, and it was missing when the first of us came back.

Of course, there was a bit of an investigation into all of this and my mum was especially wondering why the bin suddenly went missing just as the neighbours had some people come over to install a water bore.

So she decided to act on this instinct and told my dad to speak to the neighbours about what had happened, and feed them some story about some kids seeing the bore people taking the bin. Of course, our neighbour denied anything had happened and promised to have another talk to the bore people when they came back the next day.

The next day, my mum managed to catch up with our neighbour again, just before the bore people arrive. It turned out that he had talked to them on the phone, and they had said that they were annoyed we drove over their hose on our way out of our house. Which was somewhat surprising because they had left the hose on our driveway and hadn't even had the courtesy to tell us it was there.

Anyway. The bore people finally turned up and told my mum that they had seen "kids stealing the bin", which is a plausible story, only made unbelieveable by the post-script: "And by the way, did you know you drove over our $500 hose?"

Following this, my mum left to go wherever she needed to go, and happened to find the bin left in the bushes of our garden on her way back in. Our neighbour saw her and said that "the kids must have brought it back". .... Right.

The bore people were still around, but did not know about this exchange. When they saw my mum was inside, they secretively brought the bin out of the bushes and laid it on the grass outside. Unbeknownst to them, we were all home, watching as they confirmed their guilt.

Fun.

The big E

I'm having some annoying issues between my consultant, Dr Ekla dious aka "the big E" and his perceptions of my abilities. For some reason, most likely based on a limited view of myself, he thinks that I am not good at this whole 'medical thing'.

Suffice it to say, the discrepancies between what I believe I am worth in terms of marks, what the students believe I am worth in terms of marks, what other doctors believe I am worth in terms of marks differs greatly from his perception of what I am worth in terms of marks.

Who the hell cares about BNP anyway.

Waiting for a phone call

I think I might have mentioned PPD before. I think I can see the link now, even as I type this... PPD stands for Personal and Professional Development and its the faculty's way of making sure we all end up being 'rounded' doctors.

We all get assigned 'mentors' who we discuss issues with and submit essays to. The only thing is that my mentor went missing. Dropped off the face of the planet.

So I contacted the coordinator of PPD with an email telling her that my mentor's email address doesn't work. Her phone number doesn't work. And she's generally uncontactable.

Anyway, I got a reply with some new contact details. So I called her at work and her secretary is going to get her to call me back.

So I'm now waiting on the phone call.

My Idea

I have an idea.

Hopefully this idea will help me make some money.

It involves Graphic design, photoshop, a new blog, and a newspaper advertisment. Hopefully someone will be bright enough to tie all of these things together into a money-making enterprise.

To the future!

Cold Weather

I really have no idea about how I'm going to survive going to Scotland at the end of the year. I'm shivering my tits off at the moment, and it's "only" 15C. I mean, if I can't even handle 15C, how the heck am I going to handle subfreezing conditions?

I wonder what it does to your thermoregulation to be living in a place as cold as Edinburgh. People must be constantly hyperthyroid over there; to the point where it becomes physiological. I can imagine myself dying of hyperthermia, whilst travelling on the bus to the hospital.

I wonder what the locals would think.

Today's Music Link

Gen Med again

This is where we're going at the end of the year.

So what have I been doing?

Not blogging evidently. You know, it would be easy to just blow this off and say "been too busy", but to be honest, I haven't felt like writing much in here. I guess I have been too tired.

I had my observed interview today. This is the piece of assessment where you have to go with a consultant and see a patient; take a history and examine them, and then present your findings. Whereupon he's supposed to rip you to shreds and you find out how much you don't actually know.

Happily, today's experience was not too bad.

I've been nervous as hell about this thing for the last week - I've been studying, reading up, trying to see a few cases and brush up my examination skills. That kind of preparation is meant to make you feel better and give you more confidence, you know.

But this morning I felt as nervous as anything, waiting in the coffeeshop, waiting for the clock to get to 9.00 am when the aforementioned caning would begin. I was literally paralysed with fear. Maybe I have some kind of anxiety problem, I don't know.

Anyway, after walking to his office, I see Dr Millar and he greets me. Nice guy. Scottish accent. Generally quite friendly.

He tells me we should go see Mr Scott. So we walk there and we meet the guy.

I've been studying all sorts of things, COPD, heart failure, AF, MI, asthma, palpitations, etc. Not much neuro, but I figured it wasn't much use cos I would suck at it no matter how much I studied.

And guess what? The guy had...


Not a neuro problem!

He had diabetes and associated renal disease. More things I didn't read up on much. But he didn't really ask me too many difficult questions - this was almost like a tute, but with a mark at the end of it. He would tell me all about spironolactone, ACE inhibitors and renal failure - and at the end of it he asked me about two questions. But he still gave me 7/10!

I ended up doing not too badly, although it could have been better. At least that's one thing off my chest.

My favourite link for today:
You Ain't No Picasso
I've also started a page at deviantart. I'm not sure whether I'll add much to it - I guess it will depend on how much I can be bothered and how much time I have.

Michael Jackson found NOT GUILTY

Link

It's been a long and tiring term so far. I'll blog more when I have the time and/or energy.