In Search Of Unprotected Text - Another Blogger Bites The Dust (Or Does He?)

(Apologies in advance for those of you arriving at this post from Google expecting a discreet dating service or Thailand travel agents. Not that I can't tell you about both, including which massage parlours to avoid - gonorrhoea's a bitch. --Editor)

If you've been reading the comments on my last post, you'll have heard that the Unprotected Text blog has mysteriously disappeared without explanation. There's a comment on my last post by an anonymous visitor announcing the worst:

I've (sic) very sorry to report that the author of 'Unprotected Text' blog tragically died earlier this week in a road accident. His family requested the blog be taken down, and this was done so in accordance to their wishes. My thoughts are with them this week.

A couple of other commenters, who seem to know Unprotected Text's author and refer to him by name (which the above bad-news bear doesn't), have found no sign of this being the case. I hope he's okay - sometimes shit just happens to bloggers and they have to stop blogging. (Or, as in my case, you're so lazy you have sloths protesting outside your door for putting their species to shame. --Ed.)

This reminds me of the Dr Crippen death hoax last year, which I covered in this post, and which was revealed when Dr Crippen suddenly came back to life, becoming the world's first zombie doctor. The culprit was a disgruntled nurse who took offense at his nurse-bashing ways and took advantage of the good doctor's writer's block/holiday/meltdown. Things ended well there though (well, except that I slaved for hours on Photoshop to create this masterpiece for him and he didn't even mention it. Ungrateful old man. All I wanted was a little love, daddy! *cocks gun*)

Any news on Unprotected Text's status would be appreciated. Coming up: Christopher Lee FINA-friggin-LLY gets knighted, and I reveal my fetish for old British men. Completely unrelated posts, of course. Cough.

Look at this shit! I slaved for hours to create this Da Vinci-shaming
artistic brilliance! What's that you say? Your Indonesian maid could

do better and she just learnt to use Photoshop yesterday? Oh screw you.

Free Surgery For Spammers!

The changing room door squeaks loudly as I enter, hoping to change quickly and sneak into theatre without anyone noticing how ridiculously late I am. Naturally, this catches the attention of everyone in the changing room, and who should be sitting closest to the door but my latest boss, Komrad Konsultant Surgeon. God must still be mad at me from last week when I kicked that little puppy down my road. (I was reading a textbook whilst walking, okay? Also said textbook may then have ended up on said puppy. NOT MY FAULT. --Editor) I mutter under my breath to the door, "Thanks a lot, asshole." (And yes, I talk to inanimate objects, okay? It makes up for the fact that I have no friends. DON'T JUDGE ME. --Ed.)

Komrad Konsultant sweeps out the door, giving me a look that would make even Ron Jeremy's* unmentionables shrivel so much he'd need Viagra for the rest of his life. I go to theatre and look at the surgery list for the day, and I swear God must've heard what I called that door, because typed on that sheet were 2 haemorrhoid repairs, 2 anal fistulotomies (back-to-back!) and a rectal biopsy.

Bummer**.

As I scanned the list and prepared for an afternoon of going where no man had gone before (colonoscopes don't count), I swear all I could think of was -

how I wish these patients were all the spammers on my blog.

Hell, I'd do it for free. I'd even give them a huge discount on anaesthetics.

It was a while before I realised the scrub nurses were staring at my evil grinning and hand-rubbing. Man, I hate spammers.

*Famous porn star known for his huge-- um, ego. Good friend of mine. Birds of a feather must stick together. Right ladies?
**No pun intended***.
***Oh, who am I kidding.

What They Don't Tell You About Medical School

1. That calling a doctor "Sister" or worse, "Nursie" by mistake is going to earn you an hour-long scolding (during which the word "bastard" is used, and not in reference to the illegitimate child being born to the crack-dealing prostitute in the next ward), a very sore ear from previously-mentioned scolding, and a knowing snigger from every nurse you pass by for the next two weeks. (Not that I'd know anything about that, of course. Cough.)

2. That when you put in a cannula in an elderly patient in ICU (Intensive Care Unit) for the first time, YOU ARE NOT GOING TO GET IT RIGHT. And yes, the ward nurse WILL call you in two hours telling you that the patient's arm has swelled up bigger than Donald Trump's ego, and the patient's family wants to know which third-rate night-school retard doctor put that cannula in. (Not that I'd know anything about that either, of course. Cough cough.)

3. That your time management skills are going to decrease to those of a hyperactive chimpanzee addicted to Ritalin, and that this combined with a succession of emo posts and a very unfortunate exam timetable (Sunday afternoon clinical OSCE. 'Cos that's the only time they can clear the hospital's outpatients department --Editor) is going to reduce your previously impressive blog readership (three whole readers! --Ed.) to shameful (myself. Ooh, and my flatmate's dog. --Ed.)

That's all for now, folks, but right after exams I'm going to start posting reasonably regularly again. Med school has once again become the widescreen madhouse it started out to be, and hey I figure as long as I'm suffering, I might as well make some people laugh. (And if exams DON'T go well, forget the blog - come see me at your local McDonald's and I'll tell you the story in person. I'll be the guy mopping the floors - did you know they DON'T pay minimum wage? --Ed.)

The Power To Choose, Part One

The sun shines into the room as it slowly begins to set over the small hill behind the hospital, dotted with cottages and church steeples. I squint in the dusky light as Komrad Konsultant Kardiologist, my latest boss, flips open my end-of-term assessment form and sits down at his table.

"So, Angry...let's see." He begins.

I brace myself. Here come the hard questions about why I wasn't at ward rounds, why his patients have no idea who I am, and that one time I fell asleep in a patient's bed...

But Komrad Konsultant stops flipping the file, and looks out the window. "I think you've done quite well, Angry. I think you'll go far, in fact."

I blink. Me, going far? ME? Has he got the wrong file? What has he been smoking?

Komrad Konsultant adjusts his glasses as the sun glints off them. "You see...all this work you do now may sometimes seem pointless. All the slogging, all the early mornings, all the nasty doctors ordering you around..." He closes the file.

"What you have to remember is that you're storing choice for the future." Now he looks at me directly. "The really successful people in life, Angry, they reach a level where they can choose where they want to go. Which hospital, which specialty, which job. They write their own tickets. Everybody else, they have to hope and pray. But if you're REALLY good...you get to choose."

He signs the assessment form, ticks the 'EXCELLENT' box and hands it to me. "I think you're one of those who'll get to choose."

I sit for a while, just staring at him, stunned. Then I walk out of his room in a bit of a daze.

I don't think I deserved such high praise. Not at all. I haven't been focusing my energies where I should be lately. And to some extent I've betrayed my dream of clinical medicine, after moaning and ranting about it for three years in Cambridge. And I've made a few big mistakes. But hopefully it's not too late to correct them.

And it's not just me Komrad Konsultant was talking about. We all deserve the power to choose. So here's to working harder. Here's to storing up choice for the future. Thanks, Dr B.

Pain Management

Life's been tough recently. Events have been crashing together and teaching me the real meaning of what it means to be a clinical medic in London. Trials and tribulations never seem to stop, and come at you from all different directions - from hospital, from fellow students, from non-medical friends, even from the people you least expect.

And just like in medicine, what you thought was something you knew, turns out to be quite a different thing altogether.

Two big events have thrown me off-balance recently and forced me to seriously evaluate my direction in life. And I've also come to realise that I'm a little immature for my age. (Hey, just look at any other entry on this blog for proof. --Editor) But it's okay to crash and burn every once in a while - everybody does it. It's a human survival strategy.

The pain, however, is difficult to manage. I can't just put up a paracetamol or morphine drip like I would for a patient in hospital. So I have to work this out from basics, and do a few things that scare me. But hey, the stronger the wind, the stronger the trees.

Image credit: troymayr.com

A Confession

I have to come clean with something.

You know when people reach this sort of decision, it means that the guilt they're keeping inside is unbearable. It is the kind where you lose sleep thinking about it, wake up being reminded of it and go through your day with it slowly eating away at your insides. But it's over now - I'm washing my hands clean of this horrible truth I have been keeping bottled up inside.

I know I'm going to disappoint a lot of people out there. Hell, I'll probably get more than a few raised eyebrows and people disowning me as a friend, and some of my senior doctors will probably write me bad references and ruin my future job prospects. But I'd like to let you know that I appreciate our friendships thus far and all the good times we've had together.

I just watched Gossip Girl and I like it... *sigh*

(This post was shamelessly stolen from a buddy who also came to this confession a year ago. Since then he has been in therapy for his obliterated self-esteem. At least I'll have company when I join his psychiatrist.)

Diagnosis: Obama Fever

President Abraham Lincoln would be proud.

A glimpse of how Cambridge feels today:

Photo taken of actual notice board from one of the Cambridge colleges.

WOOHOO!