Work is interesting. It's new and challenging and a constant reminder that I'm not as cool as I thought. There is as it would seem much room for improvement. And that's good. Life had just been too comfortable. It's rare to see an institution that lives and breathes a work ethic that we only read about. That people speak of in hushed tones with wistful expressions while reminiscing a time long gone. While I've always maintained that no one today practices medicine with an altruistic intention and that if we work insane hours and lose sleep and food and gain tuberculosis and a host of infections (and sometimes pass them on) we're doing if because we're nuts. We're nuts enough to be masochistic enough to live that life and block everything and everyone else out. I still think so. It's just rare to see so many people living that life because at least in the majority they want to live it.
This of course means that one can't ask for a lunch break considering everybody over and above you (which is everybody) isn't eating and doesn't even look hungry. Which also means I've finally begun to lose those pounds that I put on eating potato chips and drinking coke whilst preparing for the exam(s). But at the end of the day I sleep easy. Mostly because I'm dead tired but a small part lives happily in the thought or delusion that good work has been done. My salary that due to some insane red tape courtesy the State Bank of Mysore arrived at the appointed date in cash felt earned.
All that apart I'm loving it.
The only regret maybe is the disuse atrophy that my ipod is going through.
And my ink pens that occasionally land up at work unfilled and of little use.
Funny stories do happen... as do the sad ones that medical fiction writes make royalties out of. Which brings me to this really nice book I read on surgery. No it's not Complications, which is a nice book. This one's called When the Air Hits Your Brain: Tales of Neurosurgery by Frank Vertosick (Ordered from Transatlantica by Gangarams). The take home message are a bunch of rules which are holier-than-thou, practical and funny and not all at the same time.
Here are his rules :
1. "You ain't never the same when the air hits your brain."
2. "The only minor operation is one that someone else is doing."
3. "If the patient isn't dead, you can always make him worse if you try hard enough."
4. "One look at the patient is better than a thousand phone calls from the nurse."
5. "Operating on the wrong patient or doing the wrong side of the body makes for a very bad day--always ask the patient what side their pain is on, which leg hurts, which hand is numb."
And the last one is, "Never stand when you can sit, never sit when you can lie down. Never be awake when you can be sleeping. Never take the stairs if there's an elevator. And eat and shit at every first available opportunity."
This apparently is a modification of Suldog's Philosophy of Life.
I also have a pager. Yes that relic of the 1990s that now cannot be repaired since no one knows how and cannot be replaced since it's more expensive than a Nokia 1100 and no one makes those anymore. It's numeric but occasionally due to possession by out worldly beings spews out Chinese. This means that some patient who's anything between coughing in the special wards to dying anywhere is completely dependent on some defunct technology that runs on an AAA battery with a mind of it's own for my or any other resident's attention.
And I looked the net they really aren't making the model we have anymore.
Well going by Suldog and his philosophy it is time to me to shut-eye. I'll leave you with my current desktop backdrop. It's an advertisement I realise but a good one I think...
This of course means that one can't ask for a lunch break considering everybody over and above you (which is everybody) isn't eating and doesn't even look hungry. Which also means I've finally begun to lose those pounds that I put on eating potato chips and drinking coke whilst preparing for the exam(s). But at the end of the day I sleep easy. Mostly because I'm dead tired but a small part lives happily in the thought or delusion that good work has been done. My salary that due to some insane red tape courtesy the State Bank of Mysore arrived at the appointed date in cash felt earned.
All that apart I'm loving it.
The only regret maybe is the disuse atrophy that my ipod is going through.
And my ink pens that occasionally land up at work unfilled and of little use.
Funny stories do happen... as do the sad ones that medical fiction writes make royalties out of. Which brings me to this really nice book I read on surgery. No it's not Complications, which is a nice book. This one's called When the Air Hits Your Brain: Tales of Neurosurgery by Frank Vertosick (Ordered from Transatlantica by Gangarams). The take home message are a bunch of rules which are holier-than-thou, practical and funny and not all at the same time.
Here are his rules :
1. "You ain't never the same when the air hits your brain."
2. "The only minor operation is one that someone else is doing."
3. "If the patient isn't dead, you can always make him worse if you try hard enough."
4. "One look at the patient is better than a thousand phone calls from the nurse."
5. "Operating on the wrong patient or doing the wrong side of the body makes for a very bad day--always ask the patient what side their pain is on, which leg hurts, which hand is numb."
And the last one is, "Never stand when you can sit, never sit when you can lie down. Never be awake when you can be sleeping. Never take the stairs if there's an elevator. And eat and shit at every first available opportunity."
This apparently is a modification of Suldog's Philosophy of Life.
I also have a pager. Yes that relic of the 1990s that now cannot be repaired since no one knows how and cannot be replaced since it's more expensive than a Nokia 1100 and no one makes those anymore. It's numeric but occasionally due to possession by out worldly beings spews out Chinese. This means that some patient who's anything between coughing in the special wards to dying anywhere is completely dependent on some defunct technology that runs on an AAA battery with a mind of it's own for my or any other resident's attention.
And I looked the net they really aren't making the model we have anymore.
Well going by Suldog and his philosophy it is time to me to shut-eye. I'll leave you with my current desktop backdrop. It's an advertisement I realise but a good one I think...
