Bienvenidos!

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CPR

Today I vacuumed. This place seems to a be a breeding ground for dust bunnies. I blame SuperMoo: he sheds his manly chest hair everywhere and then just like the Big Bang it condenses into miniature hairy dust planets, getting bigger and bigger by the force of their own gravity...

Ahem.

I had the most depressing lecture this week. It was about the structure of the NHS and associated bodies. I knew there was a lot of bureaucracy (spelled that right on the third attempt!) involved in this job but not how far reaching and pervasive it was. Sooooo many regulatory bodies, affiliated bodies, organisations, institutes, all with their own stupid acronyms. I felt a little suffocated by the section on career progression. It must be a lucky minority who find a career they love, who look forward to going to work every day. I've never made a secret of my reasons for going into medicine, nor my reservations about it, and yet I still don't know what else I would do. I wonder whether I did the right thing in going to university fresh out of sixth form; whether some time out would have helped me examine my motivations, desires and fortes. After school, college and university, facing a lifetime of exams, assessments, reappraisals and the like makes me feel stifled. But would I be happy going back to the anonymity of low-skilled labour? I think I would be bored. I've never been especially creative, so design or marketing was never for me. I read voraciously but don't write particularly well. I do feel content some days at work, until I remember that I still have to schedule my end of rotation meeting and send off my CRB form for my next rotation, and my last job was just horrible. I am so grateful I got it first: I had no idea what to expect and thought it was normal so just got on with it. Maybe I have it wrong. Maybe this rotation is unusually laid back. Either way, I like how it worked out. But back to my original point. Am I doing the right thing?

I cracked a lady's rib doing CPR last week. It's nothing like on TV and at first I didn't realise what the brittle 'snap' was. Neither did I realise until afterward that I had been the first on the scene so should really have taken charge. I didn't, I just started chest compressions. Actually, the first thing I did was lift her onto the bed from the chair. I have no idea how. Then I started compressions. By the time the arrest trolley was wheeled over my hands were shaking so badly I could hardly get the sticky backing off the defib pads. She didn't make it. They hardly ever do.

Argh. This was supposed to be a slightly less depressing entry than last time's. And I still have to put the pics from Panama.

Laters all.

5:48 p.m. - 2009-01-10

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