Sexual References

Very mild sexual references. In fact, not a lot interesting in this, sorry. But there has been a lot going on. I will write this randomly and hope something comes out of it.

My wife is leaving me, albeit only temporarily, to attend a cat show in another city. She departs, bearing numerous cats in numerous boxes, tomorrow morning at some barely civilised hour. People apparently send all kinds of animals on aeroplanes, last week she saw someone take delivery of a goat - a white, neatly clipped thing that emerged from a large crate wearing a collar, stood patiently while the new owners attached a lead, and then trotted obediently to someone's car.

A few days ago Sarah had to drive down to the airport to pick up some wealthy but inbred feline, the scion of some decadent house, who had paid vast sums and travelled thousands of kilometers to have sex with one of our fine oriental virgins. The entire process strikes me as slightly dodgy. If she starts driving a long limousine and wearing lots of bling, I'll let you know.

She will be away for almost a week. I have told her I will be beating my teeth and gnashing my breasts until she returns.

Anyhow. As part of this "act like you've got a social life" crusade thing, I went down to the city today. I used to have a semi-regular thing going on, where we'd all meet, meander around various bookshops/comic shops/pubs, and read, talk and drink. It's a good idea to buy stuff then go down the pub, because otherwise I come home late, with remarkable purchases ("But Richie Rich rules! And it's a mint condition - mint condition, I tell you - edition of #343, the Garth Ennis one where he fights the Punisher...")

So we're sitting at the pub and the topic gets around to the first moment you worked out you were attracted to the appropriate sex. Not first girlfriend or whatever, but some distant memory from years and years ago, some image or event or recollection, that stayed in your head for some reason, and later on you thought "My God. That/She/He/It was hot..." Maybe before you even knew what hotness was really about.

For Toby it was a Bananarama film clip, a song called Venus. Apparently there was some woman in a tight red jumpsuity kind of costume, burning like a silver flame, all that kind of thing. He remembers her wiggling about on stage, breathing and looking straight at him, and he reckons that things were pretty much determined from then on.

Me, it was an old Batman episode. Fortunately, not the one with the Joker in it, or I'd be erotically fixated on skeletally thin psychotic clowns. It was one with Catwoman in it. I will spare you the details, except to say that the plot involved some giant missile which she intended to use to blow up Gotham City. And at some point, while Batman and Robin battled assorted henchmen and goons, Catwoman (dark hair, dark eyes, catwoman suit) leapt onto said six foot long missile and yowled and gyrated about, seeking to express frustration... or something. Again, the precise details of the plot escape me, but I remember thinking "But I don't even like Batman! or Robin! So why am I watching this so intently?"

Enough sullying of the internet with pornography. Weirdly, considering how I've got rid of a lot of the repressed Biblical stuff, I still find it excruciating to talk about sex to any audience numbering more than one.

So - on to the much more palatable sickness and death. In fact, work has been damn good lately. Dr Longstocking has returned from the exam victorious (or at least partially so, having passed pathology but failed anatomy), Dr Iskandar has emerged from exile after we all thought he'd gone forever, and we are starting to prepare for April's exam.

This means I will be studying again, but it's not going to be like last time. This time I'm not going to give up all socialising, exercising, and relaxing for three to six months and then fall back in horror when my brain turns to mush. This time it's going to be more balanced. So April is physiology, pharmacology and maybe pathology. We shall see.

So, work goes well. We've had a few resuses, including two in which I was pretty much in charge, in which Dr Palsy stood and watched while we worked ... or tried to. It's a difficult thing to do, let go of control, and it's a very difficult thing to do when someone's life is in the balance, but the problem is, if we junior registrars aren't allowed to run things more or less on our own when the consultants are there, then the only time we get to operate solo is at night, when there is bugger all backup. So the best thing to do is to get us working as independently as possible while someone is there to stop us before things go awry.

Anyway, it went okay. I think I have to learn to be, if not less polite, then less circuitous in my speech. I attracted the attention of one of the nurses a few nights ago and apparently said "Excuse me, when you've got a moment, could you start the magnesium running? ... thanks a lot". In a resus this comes across as almost eighteenth century rococo ornate speech. Next will be a request for someone to charge up the defibrillator... delivered in iambic pentameter.

We also had our trauma audit. This is where the team looks at notable cases and works out what was done well and what could have been done better. One case that stuck in my mind, not because of what we did, starts out with a group of guys out drinking (no, really). Stop reading now if you are easily un-nerved. They did the responsible thing and took the bus home. Our guy got to his stop, bumbled out the bus smiling and waving, walked around the front (rather than the back of the bus) and was promptly run over. The bus (and I mean a real bus) drove over his belly. His horrified mates picked him up, slung him in his car (got the keys out his pocket) and took him BACK TO THE PUB, where he sat there for over an hour, looking shaken and bruised but still talking and drinking, when they finally decided that he should go to the hospital. He walked up to triage, complaining of abdominal pain and puilling up his shirt to show where the wheel had gone over him. We raced him around the back, stabilised him and sent him to the Royal where he was treated for four fractured ribs and a broken pelvis.

That, by the way, is positively milkwater compared to my brother's friend. The following is absolutely true, in that my brother hasseen this guy and spoken to him about it. All names have been changed...

So, my brother rang up a mate a few months ago and heard this story. Three late twenties males. Jaques Buffet Point, off the southern coast of western Australia, hundred and twenty kays from the nearest sizeable town. Late summer, just fishing, diving off the jetty and drinking. Drinking copious amounts of alcohol.

Anyway, just on three, Shawn, longneck bottle in hand, reckons "one more time" and runs out and off the jetty, dives in... and doesn't come up. Dave looks out and reckons he sees him lying on the bottom of the sea, with blood in the water. The two remaining blokes dive in, drag Shawn up. He's not breathing, he's got this big cut and dent in his head. They wrangle him up onto the jetty. The two drunks commence CPR. He starts having a seizure, but the CPR works. They get him into the ute, front passenger seat between them. One hundred and twenty kay over dirt roads. They get him to the local GP. Road ambulance to Albany, air ambulance to Perth.

And three months later he is working again. After three - three! - unstable C-spine fractures, with a bloody steel plate in his head and part of his skull wired up. Having survived an open head injury, multiple cervical fractures, anoxic seizures, drunken CPR, being driven from Jacques Buffet to Albany at high speed by said drunkards with his head lolling around like a novelty toy... and the bugger has returned to work.

And here's me taking a sicky because it's my last day at Hogarth tomorrow and what are they going to do - fire me?

Thanks for listening, something more cogent next time.

John