Bicycle vs. Car

Sooooooooo...

One big meaty hole, to go, please.

I've officially had my first proper crash on the streets of London. It hurt but it was one I could walk away from. I was on the cycle, she was in a car and decided to turn left immediately in front of me. I pulled on the panic handles and slid into the passenger door on her car and then slightly underneath it. Or at least my bike did, I tumbled off to the side and lay on my back for a while considering how quickly everything had happened.

I got up and exclaimed, using some rather salty language how surprised I was at this occurance, and how the woman driving should pay more attention to other road users.

No damage was done to my bike and I seemed to have no more than skinned knees and elbows so we left it at that and went our separate ways.

2 hours into my PBL session and one of my knees was still bleeding from what looked like a puncture wound caused by the head of an allen bolt. As my PBL-mates became progressively more grossed out by the blood dripping down my leg, I decided to head on down to the A+E dept (one of the joys of having your med school attached to a hospital). I got an x-ray for my troubles (and first hand experience of surgical emphysema - it crackles!) and a good scrub down with betadine at the hands of the A+E consultant.

It's not going to stop me riding around London, though I might go a little slower. I'd forgotten how painful it is to have a hot shower with skinned knees.

30 Day challenge: Day 7

Day 7: Your zodiac sign and if you think it fits your personality


My zodiac sign is Libra and I think it fits me rather well.

Some of my more Libran qualities:

• A desire for balance
• Even-handedness
• A love of luxury but a dislike of ostentation
• A strong belief in my cause, whatever it is
• A preference for peace over conflict
• A love of public service
• A dislike of confusion, being rushed and sloppiness

I am, however, more than familiar with the notion of Cold Reading and how 5 million people cannot have the same day (if you take the population of the UK to be roughly 60 million people). It is (as Granny Weatherwax would say) Headology and a bit of fun so long as you don't take it too seriously. Certainly, not something to put too much faith in nor spend money on.

30 Day challenge: Day 6

Day 6: Write 30 interesting facts about yourself


No :P

Hang on, let me try for ten and see how I go:

1) I was first of goodness knows generations of my family to go to university
2) I'm the first of goodness knows generations of my family to go to medical school
3) I'm almost certainly the first of my family to marry an American.
4) I double-barrelled my surname with my wife's when we got married (it sounds awesome, fyi)
5) I was once described by my high school biology teacher as a "trouble maker" (he loved plants; I thought botany was boring)
6) I rarely sleep more than 5 hours a night (a hangover from shift work, I'm sure)
7) I was rated as "nice" by the female contingent of my course (the other option was "nasty", so y'know, score!)
8) I love using my MacBook and will earn enough this year to treat myself to a MacBook Air by Christmas (student discounts rule!)
9) I'm a dirty lefty. In several different ways.
10) I'm out of Jack Daniels, so I'm drinking Gin and Juice.

10 was a push. I get why the task is 30, 'cause the whole thing is a 30 day challenge etc etc... But I'm not that interesting and I figure I'd end up with a frankly desperate list if I got to 30. Which would please no one, least of all me.

Hope you're all enjoying the start of the weekend :)

30 Day challenge: Day 5

Day 5: A time you thought about ending your life


I don't think I ever have seriously thought about ending my life. I've been depressed, but never suicidal. Well, I guess that's not *entirely* true.

Before I did my nursing training, I had a crappy job that paid enough to fund my boozing and smoking and food, but not much more. It had no future and gave me no satisfaction from a day's labour. During the time I worked there, I think I became clinically depressed. I don't know for sure as I never went to see a doctor - I didn't like the idea of a mental health problem on my permanent record. I would miss days of work because I just didn't feel like getting out of bed. I would sit, in the dark, and think about how pointless my life was. Nothing gave me any genuine pleasure. My mother said she could hear it in my voice.

There were times when I would stand at the bus stop waiting to go to my shitty job and wonder "if I just step out in front of this bus, would it be any worse?"

The answer, of course, was yes. And I knew that. I think it was more self-indulgent emo-kid behaviour than genuine suicidal ideation, to be honest. And all the bad thoughts dissipated when I left where I was living and started nursing. In retrospect, I could make a compelling case for what I experienced being that kind of whiny misery that you have to white, middle-class and male to really *own*.

So maybe it wasn't depression at all. Maybe I was just being a self-indulgent asshole. That sounds plausible, though maybe a bit more pedestrian. Recall bias and not having had an objective assessment at the time makes it hard to tell, but I guess it was an experience from which I am still learning.

30 Day challenge: Day 4

Day 4: Your views on religion


I know this is a total cop-out, but there is no way I can come up with a comprehensive, well thought-out blog post on my views on religion at this time of night after I've just spent my evening breaking the back of Respiratory Distress Syndrome (suffice it to say, more complicated than I expected).

Can I take a pass on this and I'll come back to it? Maybe I'll do two posts on Saturday or Sunday? I'd like to cover this topic, so I'd like to do it justice.

Short and dirty is, I'm an atheist. But it's a bit more complicated than that. And my personal choices don't nearly encapsulate how I feel about the notion of religion in general or other people's lives or choices.

Like I said, more complex than my brain can handle right now. So I call a Mulligan and I'll get back to you.

The Checklist

Dr Steven Novella has just done a nice post on the importance of Checklists in general. I was introduced to the notion of the WHO's surgical checklist by one of my lecturers (I forget the main thrust of her lecture) who wanted to emphasise how lives are saved by double- and triple-checking aspects of care. When we did a mock OSCE on Tuesday one of the stations was drug administration, something I've been schooled in for quite a while and it gave me chance to share one of the checklist tools I was given in my nursing training:

The 5 rights of drug administration
Right patient
Right drug
Right time
Right route
Right dose

I've seen plenty of corners cut in my time on the wards, and how it was down to people doing extra work that there weren't serious complications. I hope I don't forget this when it's my turn to do either the right thing or the easy thing. I don't think they're often the same thing.

30 Day challenge: Day 3

Day 3: Your views on drugs and alcohol

An Old Fashioned from ReeseCLloyd's Flickr stream

In an act of unintentional irony, I am blogging drunk.

Which I guess tells you a lot about my attitude to alcohol if nothing else. In my defence, I should point out that I'm not in school tomorrow or working or doing anything (other than maybe going for a run tomorrow morning) which require me to be up early. Not that I generally drink to excess. Generally.

I think drugs is a topic that can be very complicated. For an individual, I think it can represent any number of subtleties in their personality. All the dreadful aspects of the drug trade and all the ills it brings on the world aside, I think if you can't handle your high, you should probably leave any mind-altering substance well enough alone. I particularly think that becoming intoxicated and getting behind the wheel of an automobile is one of the most awful things a person can do.

I can't think of much to write on this topic without sounding judgmental in one way or another, so maybe I need to go away and think on this some more. Maybe that's the point of this exercise - to go and explore topics you thought you had pegged?