The story about the time I got baked into a pie

One day, your Mama was making a really big pie for us all to eat for dinner.  She used a bathtub to bake the crust until it was lovely and flaky and crisp.  Also, on the stove was a great big pot of boiling yummy pie filling.  Mmmmm.

I was leaning over the bathtub, smelling the delicious hot crust, when Mama turned and took the big pot of filling off the stove.  As she turned around again to begin to pour it into the bathtub, she bumped it into my back and knocked me into the pie crust without even noticing!  She poured the pie filling into the tub and covered me up with it, then put the pastry onto the top of pie, and popped it into the oven to cook, with me stuck inside.

An hour later, when the pie was piping hot and ready to eat, Mama came looking for me.  She asked you if you knew where I was, but you didn't.  "Dadda, Dadda, where are you?" you called.  Finally, you and Mama were getting so hungry that you couldn't wait any longer, so you decided to eat.  The great big pie went up onto the kitchen table and Mama cut it open with the big sharp knife.

She was very surprised when out I popped, all covered with flaky pastry and pie filling.  Wasn't that a funny thing to serve for dinner?

The story about the time your pram rolled away

Once, when you were a tiny baby, we took you to the markets to go shopping and your pram rolled away!  What happened was that I was pushing your pram with you inside, then your mama asked me to choose some mandarins.  So I let go of your pram, took a shopping bag, and started to choose the juiciest, yummiest mandarins.  But I didn't notice that your pram had started to roll away.

It rolled past the fruit shop. It rolled past the vegetable shop.  It rolled past the mushroom shop.  "Hey that pram is rolling away!" called the stall-holders.

It rolled past the chocolate shop. It rolled past the coffee shop.  It rolled past the deli.  "Won't somebody think of the children?" wailed the balloon-twister.

It rolled past the fish shop. It rolled past the chicken shop. It rolled past the bakery. "Oh the humanity!" cried the shoppers.

And it rolled all the way over the lift, and rolled right through the open doors.  And then, you reached out your tiny baby hand and pushed the button for the 3rd floor, where our car was parked.  Up, up, up, went the lift, and when it reached the third floor, your pram rolled right out the door and into the car park.

It rolled past the red car. It rolled past the yellow car. It rolled past the white car. But it didn't stop.

It rolled past the blue car.  It rolled past the black car. It rolled right up to the grey car and, bump, it stopped.

And your mama and I brought our shopping back to the car. Mama was cranky with me even though I had chosen very good mandarins because I was supposed to be looking after you and I had lost you and I didn't know where you had gone.  But then, when we got back to our grey car, there you were, in your pram beside our car, waiting happily for us to get back.

And we were so happy that we gave you lots of cuddles and kisses and nobody was sad or cranky anymore, and we all ate mandarins together.

Paddling

Consultant

And what other regular narrow-complex tachycardias do you know of?

PTR

Atrial flutter - but this is too fast so it isn't flutter.

Consultant

Unless?

PTR

Unless... it is flutter.

The Hatchling can read - kind of...

[Scene: sitting in the hospital cafe, the Hatchling points at a sign on the wall] 

Hatchling
Dada, look! "C", "O", "F", "F", "E", "E"! 

PTR
Good reading, sweetheart!  And what word do all those letters spell? 

Hatchling
Emergency? 

PTR
Close enough.

Painbook

As has been observed before, Facebook is a stinking heap of shite, which is why I seem to be irresistibly drawn to it, like a dung beetle when the moon is full.  A quick perusal of my news feed shows me that 95% or more of the posts are:

• Videos of people's ugly kids.
• Self-evident platitudes from Paul Coelho typeset in bold over a picture of a sunset.
• Quizzes urging me to find out which inanimate object or abstract category I am most similar to.
• People bitching about football.
• People bitching about television.
• Clearly fabricated heart-warming stories about returned veterans who rescued rabbits from snow-drifts then had their legs ripped off by crocodiles moments later only to have their houses renovated by rehabilitated Malaysian slum-kids.
• Desperate pleas to adopt yet another enormous and demented-looking canine.
• Gloating about holidays.
• Exaggerated news stories about scientific breakthroughs, implying that treatments for cancer and rocket-cars are just around the corner, again.
• Desperate pleas to vaccinate your ugly kids.

I'm not saying that I'm blameless here - I've blotted my escutcheon from time to time with at least one of the sins above.  But I've just spent 20 of the richest minutes of my life scanning for comments that I've left on other people's items, and I must say, the quality of my work is impeccable.  Here is a selection of some of the comments that I left over the past weekend:

• "Those are lyrics from a Starship B-side"
• "Your appearance is illegal in Queensland."
• "What if you force-fed the glitter to the celebrities, then took their livers to make sparkly foie-gras?"
• "That depends on where that finger has been I guess."
• "Racial profiling is so 2001."
• "I'll bust my ass in your cap."
• "This sack does not contain legal tender."
• "Which one are you again?"
• "I think it's a Bavarian flipperwaldt. Or possibly Hanoverian."
• "Look ma, no hands!"
• "An extra eyeball!!!!!!"

In many cases they garnered two or even three "likes", thus simultaneously sating and stoking my narcissism.  But not only did they briefly embellish my own self-regard, they also provided a breath of fresh air to the conversation they were lobbed into, in much the same way as a drunken smart-arse at a pub, reeling from person to person and belching into strangers' faces can change the atmosphere in an instant.  My final observation though, is that they are stand-alone works of beauty and truth.  My challenge to you is this: the next time you feel the need to leave a comment on any type of social media, why not use of these modern classics instead?  And not just social media - you could send one on a post-card to your Mum, you could spray-paint it on a billboard of Tony Abbott, you could blurt it out during an early morning surgical ward round.

Every comment dies. But not every comment truly lives!  

The Smiling Assassin

One of bosses at work is known as the Smiling Assassin. Not the most original nickname, I'll grant you. But it's very apt. He will stare you down, and take you apart piece by piece, while grinning affably from ear to ear, as if he's your best friend in the world. 

Contrast this with one of the other bosses, the Inquisitive Assassin. He just keeps asking you question after question. What do you mean by this? What did the patient say about that? What other things might you consider? What's the evidence for that management plan of yours? Where exactly did you get your degree from anyway?

Then there's the Frowning Assassin. She will also show no mercy, but instead has a big scowl on her face the whole time. She's either perpetually disgusted at what you have to say, or very hard of hearing. 

Still, she's easier to deal with than the Surprised Assassin. Every time I speak to him about a patient, he reacts by jumping up, mouth wide open, eyebrows lifted, hands waving in the air like a jack-in-the-box. It's very unnerving, especially when he maintains that expression and pose while telling you why every thing you have said and done for the last three years was wrong. 

Once you've faced him down, you then might have to deal with the Weeping Assassin. He just sits there sobbing, presumably reflecting with a broken heart on the dreadful fate of the poor patients that we are trying to manage as we struggle along in our ineptitude. 

The last of the bunch is the Thoughtful Assassin. He sits there, rubbing his chin in contemplation, giving nothing away, just taking it all in. Then, when you've said everything you have to say, he kills you. Actually kills you dead. His favourite method is to wait until you turn away, then he stabs you in the back of your calf muscle with a poisoned umbrella. For the more senior registrars, he will use a more complex plan, as they are naturally wary from seeing so many colleagues fall along the way. For example, recently he obtained advance information on an incoming patient transfer from a regional hospital, and planted an explosive device in the handset of the telephone in the doctors' office, keyed to go off when the pager number of the relevant surgical registrar on duty is dialled. Kaboom. Whereas with the interns, he usually doesn't even let them finish their first sentence. He just has an accomplice in a nearby building pick them off with a sniper rifle. 

The Thoughtful Assassin is on duty tomorrow. I think I might call in sick. 

The day that you realize you're married to a psychiatrist

[Scene: On the couch, watching an advertisement for the forthcoming movie, Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes] 

Smaller Half
Why do they keep making the same kind of film over and over? 

PTR
Aheywha? 

Smaller Half
They keep making these films about Man versus the Other, and the Other must be destroyed, but of course in the end it's Man who is the Other. 

PTR
Well thanks for ruining it for me.

Commentary commentary

And that's kick-off!

If you've joined us late, welcome to the exciting commentary between David Basheer and Craig Foster, who are commentating the World Cup match between Australia and Spain. This is expected to be challenging for both commentators, but possibly more so for "Foz", who, despite his big-match experience has been known to lose his composure and forget the big-match plan.  The challenge for Basheer, of course, will be to rein in his co-commentator and exert some control over the pacing of the commentary itself.

And yes, Fozzie is already starting to let his emotions get the better of him.  It's an exciting match, to be sure, but he needs to remember what his producers told him before the match: he's not part of the crowd now, he's part of a professional team delivering commentary to an Australia-wide audience, and to do that he just needs to relax a little and sit back - talk us through the action, try to provide some inside knowledge and perspective rather than simply rushing headlong into the play.

Basheer is having a good match though.  Each time there's a turnover from Fozzie, Basheer slows it down, uses his brain, constructs some good sentences by linking up words together to form coherent concepts.  It's a pleasure to watch him commentate, regardless of the result.  Oh! And that's an aggressive challenge from Fozzie during a key play, and Basheer is down! No, he's okay, back up again quickly and trying to get back into the action.  Fozzie needs to watch himself, if he gets too excited he could find himself on the bench for the second half.  The last thing the commentating team needs is to be down a man.

And that was a key moment, almost a blunder - Fozzie briefly referred to a player as Xavi when he was in fact Xavi Alonso, but immediately recovered and continued play.  An easy enough mistake to make, but it will get pounced on at this level and exploited.  I must say, the improvement in the Australian commentary team in the technical skills of name identification and pronunciation is remarkable.  We're simply commentating so much more fluently than even four years ago.  Some of the really tricky foreign phonemes have been rolling off the tongues of the team all tournament long.  Xavi is a case in point - that X, that V, neither of which are handled in the same way as they would be in Australia.  It's clear that both commentators have really done their research.

Oh dear, that's a let down - both commentators momentarily lost control of the situation when Australia conceded a sloppy goal.  Fozzie simply lying groaning on the floor, and Basheer sitting mute at the microphone.  This will be added to stoppage time at the end of the match.  The crowd back home will be disappointed in that - nothing but dead air coming over the audio.  They'll have to lift their game for the second half.

How interesting it is to reflect on the difference between the Australian style of commentating and the English.  Martin Tyler, the English great, seemingly ageless, able to stay calm and offer clear, dry, abstract commentary at all times.  Perhaps too calm for some, especially in the Australian leagues where the audience seems to require more overt barracking from their commentators, perhaps reflecting an underlying lack of faith in the team or lack of enthusiasm for the game.

But the team, Fozzie in particular, seems to have steadied their nerves now. Listen as he describes a poor sequence of Spanish play in objective teams, and then adds that it's disappointing to see that, whereas in the first half it would have been framed as an Australian triumph. He's acting much more in concert now with Basheer and it's clear from the way they hand the commentary back and forth, smoothly switching directions, effortlessly weaving anecdotes and analysis in between play-by-play descriptions  Surely if they keep up this level of performance they'll break through soon!

And here, Australia on the attack again, listen to Foz, he's really flying now. Back to Basheer, who rapidly disposes back to Foz - Foz to Basheer again, watch them go.  Basheer with a little metaphor there, very tricky, no, he's mixed his metaphors, but Foz has scooped it up and recovers well with some alliteration, but that's an opportunity lost.

The underlying structure and organisation of the team is emerging now as the game develops late in the second half.  Foz is taking over more when the ball is in Australia's half, with Basheer doing duty in Spain's half.  It's a good system which give some balance to the listener, and I think the producer has allocated their roles well.  When the ball is near the Spanish goal, Foz does become hysterical and incoherent, so Basheer is better placed to take over here, notwithstanding the screams and grunts that can be heard over the top of him.  And when Spain gets a good attack rolling you can hear the strain and desperation in Foz's voice but he retains control with occasional backup from Basheer.  How much influence, I wonder, has Les Murray had on this system, with his vast experience of managing Foz's enthusiastic ramblings on television?

And here we are, only two minutes of stoppage time added.  Both commentators, I'm sure, will be relieved to reach the end of this game.  You can hear them tiring, the energy is simply not there.  I can't help wondering if perhaps they didn't push just too hard in that first half when they were so hopeful.  I think it left them lacking legs in the second half when they really needed to keep the listeners involved after Spain's second goal.  Their talk became just a little lacklustre, lacking imagination and not as crisp as it really had to be to perform for a full 90 minutes at this level.  Nevertheless they put in a spirited performance which is so much a part of the Australian way of commentating.  I do wonder, though, if this might be the last time we see them commentate at a World Cup.  Sad to think that this could be the end of an era.

There's the whistle!  That's full time!  They push back their chairs, turn off the microphone, and take a deep breath. Another splendid performance from SBS's commentating team.  They're swapping shirts now, another one for the pool room.  Thanks for joining me, I'll see you next time with more commentary commentary.  If you have any commentary commentary commentary, leave a comment below.

Placebo effect

The placebo effect is oft misunderstood.  Strictly speaking, the placebo effect is the subjective or objective improvement in a patient's health after being administered a deliberately inert treatment which they believed would genuinely benefit them.  The label tends to get stuck on any number of unrelated though equally baffling phenomena.  Here's a few examples of similar effect which are in fact not placebo effects:

The nocebo effect. This is the subjective or objective deterioration in a patient's health after being administered a deliberately inert treatment which they believed would genuinely harm them.

The albedo effect.  This is the subjective or objective improvement of a patient's surface reflectivity after being adminisered a deliberately inert treament which they believed would genuinely make them more shiny.

The gazebo effect. This is the subjective or objective transformation of the patient into an outdoor, open-walled roofed area, usually octagonal, after being administered a deliberately inert treatment which they believed was a psychedelic drug.

The Placido effect.  This is the subjective or objective improvement in a patient's singing voice, particularly in the tenor range, after being administered a deliberately inert treatment which they believed was a gift from the Aoedean muse.

The libido effect.  This is the subjective or objective improvement in a patient's sexual drive or endurance after being administered a deliberately inert treatment which they believed was an aphrodisiac.

The bushido effect.  This is the subjective or objective improvement in the patient's ability to temper his violent martial instincts with forebearance, serenity and insight, after being administered a deliberately inert treatment which they believed was prescribed by the long-dead Japanese author and diplomat Nitobe Inazo. To be honest, it doesn't really come up that often but I thought I'd include it for completeness.

So the next time you go to your doctor complaining of having changed into a pavilion, belvedere, rotunda or pergola while you were tripping, and he mistakenly suggests that perhaps it was due to the placebo effect, you'll know precisely what to say!

No Known Drug Allergies

One day, when I have a bit more spare time, I'm going invent a medication which could be plausibly abbreviated NKDA, such as norketodopamine. (Does that name even make sense? Don't ask me, I'm a idiot blogger not a biochemist. But if you can have owlbears, I can have this.)

Then I will discover that it is not only therapeutically vital for the treatment of depression, acne, obesity, ischaemic heart disease, or some other such common condition, but also lethal if treatment is abruptly ceased.

And all over the world, pharmacists will have conniptions because patients will be bringing in prescriptions for norketodopamine re-supply, but the script will also have written, in the little box for Allergies/Adverse Reactions:

(Wait for it)

(You can see it coming, can't you?)

NKDA

That will be briefly amusing for me as I lounge on my Throne Of Spleens, contemplating my empire and watching the dancing girls.

A modest proposal for the solution of my employment woes

[Editor's note: this was written more than a year ago, and was recently unearthed from the dusty archives of my "Drafts" folder.  History does not relate the ultimate destiny of the young poet who scribed it to his beloved, so many moons ago blah blah blah but I forgot to hit the "Publish" button. Enjoy.]

Man, the last hour of work is always a real struggle.  Yesterday I powered through the first 11 hours of my shift with (relative) ease.  I was an admitting machine.  Ask ask ask. Talk talk talk.  Examine examine examine. Write write write write write write write write write write WRIIIIITE!!!  It's a doctor's life.  But the last hour, from 11 to midnight, was a killer. 

In all honesty, it was not a killer.  Nobody died.  I've had many many worse hours of work.  But it just sapped my energy and enthusiasm.  Lately I've really been struggling with my response to people who've had lifelong illness or disability.  I think my parental paranoia gets hyperstimulated by it and I start to dwell on the difficulties that these people and their families must have faced.

Then I get all shirty about how objectively wonderful my life is and why I'm not subjectively more over the moon about it all. But that's not important right now. What I'm talking about is how if I'd had that same patient earlier in the day I'd probably not have been so bothered about him.  But by the time I was tired and looking forward to going home, I was all fragile, like a beautiful butterfly or a little crispy cookie.

I think to address this, all my shifts should be one hour shorter.  Of course, it's possible that the same situation would recur, and I would once again become all dysphoric and whiny in the 11th hour of work rather than the 12th.  In which case I submit to you that the best thing would be to shorten my shifts again by another hour.

Eventually I hope to be working 1 hour days.

Dice man

Necessity is the mother of invention.  And boredom is the father.

Having to do solo ward rounds on the weekend is pretty easy.  Most patients don't need radical changes of plan over the weekend, and in any case the services often just aren't there anyway.  So most of the time you can make sure that nothing disastrous has happened and write, "Continue current management" as the plan.  All well and good.

But last year I was having to lead lots of ward rounds with me, the intern, and a med student.  My registrar had been off sick a fair bit and two mornings a week she was in theatre so I was "in charge" those days too. There's only so many days in a row that you can stall and do nothing before even the med student starts to look at you funny and (presumably) wonder if they couldn't do a better job themselves.  (I know this because I was a med student two years ago and frankly, the residents then were two-bit dumbo nothings. Not like now.)

So I needed some means of coming up clinical management plans despite not actually knowing anything.  (Necessity).  And one afternoon I found myself with 10 spare minutes while waiting for a phone call.  (Boredom).  Invention!

Presenting PTR's Patented Platonic Prismatic Planning Pthing:

I took one of the blue rubber cubes that come with ABG syringes.  On each of the six sides I wrote a clinical plan.  When you find yourself needing a quick change of direction in management, simply roll the dice and do as it says.  Here's a quick guide and accompanying commentary:

1. ICU.  You should call ICU and ask them to review the patient.  All patients benefit from an ICU review.  Even if they are completely clinically stable, ICU loves to be called so they get the chance to review patients before they get really sick.  It gives them something to aim for.
2. Discharge.  Everyone hates to be in hospital.  Everyone has to go home sooner or later.  We need the bed for the people who will be sick tomorrow.  Are you getting the hint?
3. Psych.  "You don't have to be crazy to be a patient here, but it helps!"  People who are sick in hospital often feel sad or withdrawn.  It's a reasonable reaction to a significant stressor.  But who is to say where the dividing line is between hidden relief at missing a day of work and crippling depression with suicidal ideation? Who is to say where the line is between an intermittently irreverent blog and complete psychotic breakdown?  A psychiatry registrar would love to get involved.
4. Nursing home placement.  Everyone hates to be in hospital.  Everyone has to get old sooner or later.  We need the bed for the people who will be sick tomorrow.  Are you getting the hint?
5. CTPA.  A honking great CT scan of the chest with plenty of radiation and some intravenous contrast to boot.  All to rule out some speculative nonsense diagnosis which was never going to be true anyway.  CTPAs are a great way to buy yourself extra time.  The radiology registrars need the practise, and for added fun you can remove the patient's IV line before the test so the radiologists can keep up their clinical skills by reinserting it themselves.
6. Palliative care.  Everyone hates to be in hospital. Everyone has to die sooner or later.  We need the bed for the people who will be sick tomorrow.  Are you getting the hint? 

Try it out yourself and let me know how it works out.  I'm thinking of developing a similar one for use in the Emergency Department so I'd love to get your ideas.

PE self-test

A pulmonary embolism (PE) is a dangerous, potentially lethal medical condition that is notoriously variable in its clinical presentation, hence is difficult to diagnose without performing invasive medical imaging. PEs occur most commonly when a blood clot travels down the pulmonary artery to the lungs, blocking circulation and thus preventing the lung from being able to absorb oxygen from the air properly. Not the sort of stuff you expect to see in a late night TV advertisement.

Yet a few nights ago I found myself watching an ad wherein an attractive young couple switched off the light in their bedroom, only to turn it back on again a few (subjective) minutes later, evidently much to the young lady's disgust. She then proceeded to harangue the young gentleman about his PE, urging him to seek assistance, whereupon the contact details of a suitable company were placed upon the screen. This all made no sense to me at all until I later discovered that PE is also an abbreviation for premature ejaculation.

It occurred to me that this type of mix-up must happen all the time, with potentially dire consequences. A patient turns up to hospital suffering PE and somewhere along the way there is bound to be some confusion unless everyone is clear exactly what is going on. So I have compiled this short quiz to help you test your knowledge of PE. Simply read each statement and decide which type of PE the statement applies to. Good luck!

1. Pregnancy can cause PE. 

2. A brief period of mobility in bed can cause PE. 

3. Patients with PE can appear breathless, tachycardic, and sweaty. 

4. PE can manifest within seconds, with little warning. 

5. A prolonged period of immobility in bed can cause PE. 

6. In PE the primary problem is often venous.
7. PE can cause pregnancy.

8. In PE the primary problem is seldom Venus. 

9. PE can cause sudden collapse and unconciousness.
10. PE is often preceded by the appearance of a hot, red, swollen extremity.

I will post the answers in a comment below in a week.

On being farty

Today I am farty.  Yesterday I was not.  But at the stroke of midnight, something changed: I am now farty and will be farty (at the very least) for the rest of my life.  Some of you who read this may be surprised to hear that I'm farty.  Perhaps you know me personally and I just didn't have that air about me.  Or perhaps you're surprised that I'd be talking about it like this; for some reason, being farty seems to something to be ashamed of in modern society.

In our grandparents' era, being farty meant that you were of a particular level of maturity.  People gave you respect.  You had responsibilities.  You had solidity in your life. Sure, you might be slowing down, people might have thought of you as a bit of a pompous gas-bag but that doesn't mean you weren't still full of beans.  But these days, and I am a case in point, being farty just means that you're older but perhaps not wiser.  People's lives are much more fluid these days; I had a whole other career and trajectory before I even started to study medicine.

There's a pressure that comes with being farty.  I'm hoping that I can ease some of that pressure by trying to keep things more fluid, while also striving for solidity in the future.  I guess what I'm really trying to say is that I don't think it's helpful to label yourself as farty, or not-farty - surely everyone is farty in some way, at some time, even if they'd like to pretend otherwise. Farty is a just state of mind. Before I was farty I fell into the trap of thinking of it as the end of something rather than the beginning.  Being farty is nothing more than a sign of more surprises in store.

Am I really farty? The answers, as Bob Dylan said, are blowin' in the wind.

Up the wolves

There's bound to be a ghost 

At the back of your closet,

No matter where you live.

There'll always be a few things, 

Maybe several things,

That you're gonna find really difficult to forgive.

There's gonna come a day 

When you'll feel better.

You'll rise up free and easy on that day.

And float from branch to branch,

Lighter than the air.

Just when that day is coming, 

Who can say,

Who can say.

Our mother has been absent,

Ever since we founded Rome

But there's gonna be a party 

When the wolf comes home.

We're gonna commandeer 

The local airwaves.

To tell the neighbors what's been going on.

And they will shake their heads,

And wag their bony fingers

In all the wrong directions,

And by daybreak we'll be gone.

I'm gonna get myself in fighting trim.

Scope out every angle 

Of unfair advantage.

I'm gonna bribe the officials,

I'm gonna kill all the judges,

It's gonna take you people years

To recover from all of the damage

Our mother has been absent,

Ever since we founded Rome.

But there's gonna be a party 

When the wolf comes home.

- John Darnielle

Potato Varieties for Fun and Profit

The Désirée is a red-skinned main crop potato originally bred in the Netherlands in 1962. It has yellow flesh with a distinctive flavour and is a favourite with allotment-holders because of its resistance to drought, and is fairly resistant to disease. It is a versatile, fairly waxy variety which is firm and holds its shape and useful for all methods of cooking; from roasting to mashing and salads.

The Russet Burbank potato is a large potato with dark brown skin and few eyes. Its flesh is white, dry, and mealy, and it is good for baking, mashing, and french fries. It is a common and popular potato. Russet potato came to headlines in 2014 when U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry presented a pair of russet potatoes to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Kerry stated that the gift was in reference to a previous conversation and was not motivated by any hidden meaning or metaphor.

The Robertson Emperor is a grandiose, elaborate potato.  It has a floury, mealy flesh which is not well suited to boiling or steaming.  However, when triple roasted in duck fat and rubbed on the inside of a silver tureen, it is capable of raising even the most tarnished tableware to a brilliant shine.

The Blackroot Honeycrown is a traditional Iberian throwing potato.  Its rough and pitted skin affords an excellent grip to the thrower but sacrifices the control thus gained for raw speed of delivery due to the aerodynamic drag.  Legend has it that the champion Honeycrown tosser Anante Tescolenes will one day return to earth on a golden blimp to revive the lost art of "Acuraverio", or flinging the potato with such violence that it spontaneously self-exfoliates and arrives at the target entirely devoid of skin.

The Cheerful Florence was bred in 1930's New Jersey in an attempt to lighten the lives of the poor slum-folk of Newark.  When immersed in water to cook, the steam escaping from its eyes forms bubbles which, to a sufficiently imaginative or desperate listener, seem to tap out of the rhythm of some of Cole Porter's lesser known Broadway show tunes.  It was not a popular success and is believed to be extinct.

Doctor Starlight's Opal Fritter is a disappointing potato.  Blandly flavoured, mushy fleshed, smelling faintly of used cat litter, and drab grey in colour, it is nevertheless a common entrant in the North American Tuber Fancy shows since 1992 due to the commercial clout of Monsanto which continues to heavily subsidize the Opal Fritter, whose patent rights they acquired in mysterious circumstances during an Egyptian river cruise with representatives of the Vatican.  Approximately 1 in every 2 million Opal Fritters will contain a skin lesion resembling Gene Wilder.  These rare specimens are highly prized among members of Gene Wilder's family.

The Dragonclaw Dragontalon Dragonlady Katana Griffonclaw Axekiller is a good mashing potato but is surprisingly vulnerable to frosty weather.  It grows well in drier, well-drained soils and will flourish with regular top ups of potash and a little TLC to keep it free from pests.

Another business proposal

My new ambition is to make plastic owls a thing of the past.  Our grandchildren will one day be rummaging through the attic and will find an artificial owl and they'll say, "Why on earth would you buy something like this?", and we'll say, "We bought it to stop pigeons shitting on our cars", and our grandchildren will say, "But why didn't you just use PTR's All-Natural Method For The Repulsion Of Pigeons(tm)?"

And you - YOU, Dear Reader - will be able to say that you got in on the ground floor.

Here's how it goes.  At the moment, if the pigeons keep shitting on your car, you buy a plastic owl and stick it on the roof of your garage.  "Holy shit!", the pigeons think. "I don't want to get eaten by an owl. I'm off!"  And they leave.  But eventually even a pigeon will realize that the owls never move.  They clue in to the owl being fake, and come back in even greater numbers.  It'll be like that Alfred Hitchcock film, "The Pigeons That Kept Shitting On My Car".

So my initial plan was to instead attach a plastic pigeon to the roof of your garage.  The owls would see it, and come to attack it.  The real pigeons would then see the owls attacking the fake pigeon and think, "Holy shit! I don't want to get eaten by an owl. I'm off!"  And they would leave.

The problem with this plan is that:

1. owls are smarter than pigeons, and
2. it's a lot easier to realize that something is plastic when you're trying to eat it than when you're trying to hide from it.

So my revised plan, now known as PTR's All-Natural Method For The Repulson Of Pigeons(tm), is to sprinkle bird seed on the roof of your garage.  Real bird seed, not plastic, in case you're wondering.  The (real) pigeons come to eat the (real) bird seed, the (real) owls come to eat the (real) pigeons, and the (real) pigeons think, "Holy shit! I don't want to get eaten by an owl. I'm off!"  And they leave.

Who's interested?  I need seed capital.

Candystore

Doctor

So you have you ever taken risperidone? 

Patient

No.

Doctor

Quetiapine?

Patient

No.

Doctor

Olanzapine?

Patient

No.

I tried marzipan once.  I got it from a friend. 

Questioned

I took my merchandise up to the shop counter.  The sales assistant took it from me, peered at it, peered back at me, looked me up and down, and said, "Are you sure you really want King-size?"

I'll never buy socks from them again.

Dis-Organisation part 2

In the previous episode our hero found himself without a job, with the end of the year fast approaching...

Whereupon he got an unsolicited email revealing that he had inherited millions of dollars from a previously unheard-of distant relative in Nigeria - no wait - different story. 

Whereupon he got an unsolicited email from the administrator of a training program for junior doctors asking him if he would like to take part. (Ok I'm not going to write this whole damn thing in the 3rd person - get ready for an illeism purge - yoink!)

So I got an email from the people running this training program asking if I'd like a job. As with my experience at the end of 2012, I have no idea how they got hold of my details or why they chose me, but when someone offers to give you money to buy candy, you say YES!

I was told that they would be having interviews in a couple of weeks, but a couple of weeks later I hadn't heard anything, so I shot an email off to the person who had contacted me, asking wassappnin? And I got back an autoreply saying she didn't do that job anymore.  Uh oh.  I contacted the person who had taken over from her, and he had never heard of me.  Furthermore, they were interviewing candidates in a few days.

Somehow I cajoled him into adding me to the interview list, rocked up to the interview, told a bunch of outrageous lies and half-truths, wept shamelessly while pleading for mercy, and got the job!

I had a friend a while back who was doing some recruitment for the public service for a largish group of people to get involved in a special project. She had had to take over the job from someone else halfway through, who had already sorted the applicants into PROBABLEs and OVER-MY-DEAD-BODYs.  So she took the PROBABLEs and proceeded to offer them jobs and train them and send them off to do their work, all the while thinking to herself, "Boy these people are idiots.  I'd hate to see the ones who were rejected."  At some point she began to get the same feeling of dawning realisation that you may be experiencing even now, and pulled the rejected candidates' paperwork from archives, only to find that they were highly qualified, motivated and intelligent people who would have been great for the job, and she realized that she had gotten the two piles of applications mixed up and had given jobs to the OVER-MY-DEAD-BODYs.

So it goes to show - never give up. No matter how shambolic the recruitment process, no matter how unqualified you are, you can always shoulder your way onto the payroll if you have persistence.

Unless you actually are qualified and good at the job with plenty of relevant experience.  Then you're fucked.

Et two sandwiches?

At another cafe near my house, the general air is that it's a hang-out for the retired and impaired.  There is nothing cool or stylish about it, but it's clean, new, and well-maintained with an atmosphere best described as "home-made v clinical".  But that's not why I go there.

I go there because I can get a toasted cheese and tomato sandwich and a coffee for $6.90.  I've been there 2 or 3 times per week in the last few months, just to sit down and read the paper and forget my woes.  The guy who runs it is a bit bumbling but nice, and eventually learned what my "regular" order was just in time for me to stop going there because I got a new job.

When it was time to leave I would sit there reading, covertly watching him out of the corner of my eye, until he was busy with another customer.  Then I would briskly get up and with a wave and shout of "See you later!", I would bolt for the door while avoiding eye contact.  Strange behaviour, I know, but if I didn't do this I would be trapped in a deadly escalation of farewells.

This is what would happen - every time I would say goodbye he would come back at me with another goodbye.  He would ALWAYS have the last word.  Which is fine - I can deal with that - but then he'd throw in another zinger to which I would have to respond.  He had an enormous arsenal of valedictory phrases to assault me with.  Example:

PTR

Thanks very much, bye!

Guy

You're welcome!

Have a great day!

PTR

Thanks, you too.

Guy

I will.

Thanks for coming.

PTR

Ha ha, no worries.

Guy

Yep, no worries.

Take it easy!

PTR

You too.

Guy

Too easy!

See you next time!

PTR

If we do meet again, we'll smile indeed;

If not, 'tis true this parting was well made

Guy

Why, then, lead on. O, that a man might know

The end of this day's business ere it come!

But it sufficeth that the day will end,

And then the end is known. Come, ho! away!

Exeunt.

I just have this nagging feeling that it's not going to end well...

Did you say "long black"?

There's a little coffee shop by a park near my house. They have a little chalkboard out by the road, with messages upon it to entice in the weary motorists.  It will usually say something like,

"Try Rhys's famous soup!"

or

"Fresh muffins!"

or

"Free wi-fi"

or

"Cool inside".

Recently I drove by and it said, (and I am not making this up, not even a little bit)

"Friday - my favourite F-word".

I really really wanted to go in and order a cup of my favourite C-word.  But I didn't because it's a nice little cafe that I like to take the Hatchling to and I didn't want to spoil it by acting all creepy.

Earworm

I heard a great song the other day.  It went something like this:

A-jump-a-jump-a-jump-a!
A-jump-a-jump-a-jump-a!
A-jump-a-jump-a-jump-a!
A-jump-a-jump-a-jump-a!
A-jump-a-jump-a-jump-a!

A-dance-a-dance-a-dance-a!
A-dance-a-dance-a-dance-a!
A-dance-a-dance-a-dance-a!
A-dance-a-dance-a-dance-a!
A-dance-a-dance-a-dance-a!

A-jump-a-jump-a-jump-a!
A-jump-a-jump-a-jump-a!
A-jump-a-jump-a-jump-a!
A-jump-a-jump-a-jump-a!
A-jump-a-jump-a-jump-a!

A-boingee-boingee-boingee!
A-boingee-boingee-boingee!
A-boingee-boingee-boingee!
A-boingee-boingee-boingee!
A-boingee-boingee-boingee!

[Repeat ad nauseum with verbs or onomatopoeia of your choice]

Really great lyric writing like that can just connect you to a higher plane.  Especially when you hear it coming from the back seat of your car for about 45 minutes non-stop as you drive along a long, straight, wilderness road while your Smaller Half snoozes in the passenger seat.

What a trip!

I've gone viral

At the moment, I'm working in a position where I am supposed to move around to different places depending on who is away - a lot like a relief teacher.  If one of my Esteemed Colleagues goes on leave for a week, I take over their job for that time.  Sometimes the job lasts a few days, sometimes for months.

Being an organized, control-freaky kind of guy, I thought it would be nice to know how long I would be working in my current position before having to move somewhere else.  This has important ramifications for my planning of various activities such as stealing stationery, staking out a claim to a good desk, whether or not it's worth maintaining my personal hygiene, and so on.

So I emailed my boss and asked how long I would be there for.  I was told to ask her boss.  So I did, and I cc-ed admin so they would get the answer. And her boss told me I should have asked my boss, and cc-ed admin, my boss, and the director of training.

The director of training then responded to all of the above, and added in my boss's boss's boss, and that person's boss for good measure.  This then got forwarded to another big big boss, who then responded to everyone and also included twenty-three other people in the distribution list, including 12 big big bosses.

Then my boss emailed just me, repeating the information.  Then she emailed me, her boss, admin, head of training, the big big boss and the big big boss letting them know that she planned to answer my question and in fact proceeded to do so in the same email (presumably for the sake of efficiency).

Just in case that's not clear, I've prepared a diagram.  Time flows downward, each email is indicated by a red line.  For the sake of brevity, I have grouped all 23 people emailed by the other big big boss into one column, since they themselves didn't send any further emails themselves.

If you've ever wondered why waiting times at hospitals are so long, or wondered why the health budget consumes approximately 600% of available revenues, here's at least one answer. It takes more than fifty emails for me to find out whether I should shave today.

Dis-Organisation part 1

So, once again, I found myself without a job. This happened after internship, as I have previously documented.

Once again I applied for a year of general training. And once again I crashed and burned - worse, this time, because I wasn't even deemed worthy of interviewing by ANY of the hospitals I applied to. This perplexed me. I don't wish to cast aspersions on my colleagues, but there's some fucking numbnuts out there that seem to have no difficulty at all getting jobs despite presenting a clear and present danger to the lives of their patients and the mental health of their cow-orkers.

So I rang up the hospital to find out what was going on. They told me that I wasn't ranked high enough for interview; I asked why. They said that my aggregate score was not high enough; I asked which scores. They said that my referee reports were very good, my CV was very good, but my cover letter was only average. Well excuse me.

Apparently the cover letter, or to be more accurate, the assessment of the cover letter by an embittered HR manager, is just as important a predictor of success as a doctor as the opinions of said doctor's actual supervisors and their previous record of achievement.

Fuck.
That.
Shit.

Admittedly, I have nobody but myself to blame. Labouring under the delusion that recruitment would be a rational process, my cover letter basically said something like:

"Dear Hospital, give me a job. I don't want anything special, just don't screw up my paychecks too egregiously. Sincerely, PTR. p.s. I am not a numbnut".

And presumably they get a lot of cover letters like that because this was assessed as average.

I'm unsure precisely how one would write an above average (or even exceptional) cover letter. I suppose a below average one would contain errors of fact, spelling, grammar, and so forth. I could get the Hatchling to dictate mine:

"Dear Hossabil, I am a goktor. Do you want moneys? I want moneys. I give you a cuddle. ROOOAAAAR!! No, you not roar. I roar. Sincerely, PTR"

Hmm, that's actually pretty good. Perhaps that would actually be assessed as Exceptional. I don't wish to cast aspersions on the cognitive capacity of the typical embittered HR manager, but they don't seem like the fluffiest pavs on the table. But to be honest, given the aggressively proactive manner in which some of my colleagues promote their own career interests, I suspect the Exceptional cover letters read like this:

"Dear Hospital, any o' you sumbitches don't gimme a job, I'm not only gonna kill him, I'll kill his wife, all his friends, and burn his damn house down! Sincerely, PTR"*

If I was an embittered HR manager wishing to perpetuate the employment of antisocial personality types in the public hospital system, I would cry from happiness when I got a letter like that. Seriously, try it yourself next time.

So - that's the story of how I came to not have a job. Next - the story of how I came to have one again (or so it seems).

*With apologies for plagiarisation to the writers of Unforgiven.

Premature retirement

Walk in the sun, or

Shall I wallow in silence?

The day off - again.

Not quite Heinlein

"A human being should be able to spin silk, roll a dung ball with his legs, lift fifty times his own weight, leap one hundred times his own height, continue to mate whilst having his head devoured, walk on water, spray noxious chemicals from his hind-parts, drink eight times his own weight in blood, hover in mid-air. Specialization is for insects." - PTR

Psychiatry for toddlers

This week I've been working as a locum in the emergency department, with the psychiatry team.  Here is the transcript of a conversation I just had with the Hatchling about it:

Hatchling

Dada, did you work today?

PTR

Yes, I did.

Hatchling

Were there lots of people and animals?

PTR

There were lots of people, yes, but no animals.

Hatchling

Were you friendly?

PTR

I was.  That's what my job is all about. When people are feeling really sad, they come to the hospital and I am friendly and nice to them, and then they aren't so sad anymore.

Hatchling

Did you give them a cuddle?

PTR

No, I just talk.  The only people I give cuddles to are you and Mama.

Hatchling

Thank you Dada.

In reality, of course, it's not quite so simple.  Psychosis, attempted suicide, substance abuse, people with really tragic histories of childhood abuse, pain, and deprivation.  But I think the details can wait until the Hatchling is a bit older than 3.  Until then I'll just continue counting my lucky stars and trying to be the best Dada I can be.  And being as friendly as I can to people who need a friend.

A list of anniversary gifts

Meanwhile, the Smaller Half and I have recently celebrated our 9th wedding anniversary.  "Celebrated" having a specific meaning, of course, when you have a small child and busy jobs - we caught up for a late lunch and shared a sandwich.  Hooray!

My brother observed that the 9th anniversary is traditionally associated with gifts of willow and pottery, and that perhaps there was some relationship with the Australian cricket team having just won the Ashes.  I thought that this was a surprising coincidence.  He thought that there was perhaps a causative relationship. So I started to look into some of our previous anniversaries to see if any other momentous events may have been due to our tying of the nuptial knot.  First, I needed a definitive list of the traditional gifts associated with each year of marriage.

Much to my surprise, I discovered that every man and his dog seems to enjoy inventing and propagating such lists.  There are "modern updated lists" which claim, for example, that the 4th anniversary should be marked with the gift of kitchen appliances.  There are "spiritual lists" which claim that the 6th anniversary is the quartz anniversary.  There are "nerd lists" which insist that the 10th anniversary is the "flight simulator" anniversary.  These were not what I wanted.

Eventually I managed to track down, in the local library, a moldering crumbly parchment. It is dated from the middle of the 14th century, and has been tucked away, hidden for centuries, in the 23rd edition of the Guinness Book Of Records, which had been mis-shelved in the poetry section.  It records, in the wavering hand of the Capuccin monk Bernadetto Ristretto, the definitive list of anniversary gifts, and was penned as part of the church's planned statement opposing marriage between unrelated couples, the intention being to glorify and uphold the status quo.  And it goef a little fomething like thif:

1. Paper. Preffed ye from reedf growne on the bankf of the briny ocean.
2. A booke of marvelouf and interefting geometrey.
3. A dicke in a boxe.
4. Tranfuranic metalf, formed into a chain or locket that doth glow.
5. A fmall puppey or kitten, calleth Fpot or Fufie, refpectively.
6. A big hatte, fufficient to hide therein a dram of wine.
7. Anti-hiftaminef for the relief of the feafonal rhinitif.
8. A hogfhead of wine, fufficient to hide therein a big hatte.
9. A pockette-fized notebook for the tranfcribing of one'f numerouf paffwordf.
10. The Blue Whale and feveral dayf krill for the feeding of.
11. A particularly bouncey balle, for fport.
12. Thingf of the color red.
13. A native of the Indief for one'f perfonal amufement and care.
14. A jar of fartf.
15. A gifte voucher for a night in one of thofe noveltie "Ice Hotelf".
16. A choir of flender boyf to fing the greateft hitf of Ftatuf Quo.
17. To have a new font named for you, oh verily.
18. A glaff of horfe milke, with the haire extracted with all due diligence and care.
19. A confervative legiflature.
20. The Duke Of Yorke, with pantf of courfe..
21. A copy of thif lift.

... and so on.  It was a useful list, and certainly much more interesting than the typical nonsense that gets foisted on unsuspecting couples every anniversary.  It's such a shame that such a valuable piece of tradition and history has been lost for so long, and I am very excited about having the opportunity to bring it to the attention of the world.

I suggest that the next time your anniversary rolls around, or that of your parents or siblings, you consult this list for gift ideas.  Just imagine how surprised they will be!

Vital signs

Hatchling

I take your tenchaba. 

[Sticks a finger in my ear] 

PTR

What is it? 

Hatchling

One o'clock!

Party pooper

Hatchling

Look at that boy.

Smaller Half

That's not a boy. That's a man. He has a condition called achondroplasia. Can you say "achondroplasia"?

Hatchling

Aycondopaza

Smaller Half

Oh my god, she can say "achondroplasia"!

PTR

Yes, because you just told her to.

Some day

[The scene - watching an animated nursery rhyme ending in a teddy bear going to school]

Hatchling

Teddy bear go to school?

PTR

Yes, one day you'll go to school too.

Hatchling

I go to school some day, when I am tall.

Zen master in action

Smaller Half

Which is your favourite, the swing or the slippery-slide? 

Hatchling

Red?

Get me Pam or Bev

Clinic. Oh how I hate thee.

Now that I am a fully registered non-intern-type actual doctor, I have to run a clinic.  It could be worse - it's only one morning every fortnight.  But it is nuts.  I am in fact a reasonably good doctor, despite my gross inexperience.  Thanks to my eidetic memory, burly forearms, and devil-may-care smile, I am quite good at preventing people from dying whilst in my care unless they have an actual life-threatening illness.  But clinic isn't about avoiding killing people until you can handball them on to the next shift.  It's about actually trying to get things done.  Mysterious things.

You sit in a tiny little room seeing patients who need expert advice on their medical issues.  Patients you have never seen before and will probably never see again, who have problems you've never heard of, and have no idea how to appropriately manage.  You may think this sounds foolish, wasteful, dangerous, stressful, or even ludicrous.  You are correct.

What happens is that people go to see their GP and say, "When I wake up in the morning I can smell ferrets".  And the GP says, "Hmmm", and then says, "I'm going to refer you to a colleague of mine who specializes in this type of thing, as it can be quite serious". And the GP writes a letter to the clinic saying, "Thank you for seeing Mr John Patient regarding him waking up in the morning and smelling ferrets, for your advice and ongoing management etc".

And you turn up at clinic and there is a file sitting on your desk with the GP's letter in it, which you read and think - what the fuck?  So you bring the patient into your room and ask him every question you can think of that seems relevant - no, I don't own a ferret - no, I don't ever smell anything else - yes, I'm allergic to strawberries - no, I don't have diabetes or epilepsy.  And after twenty minutes of this you are none the wiser, and resign yourself to asking the consultant.

Yes, the Big Boss is sitting in a tiny little room next door, seeing his own patients just like you are but presumably not thinking, what the fuck? quite so often as you.  So you knock on his door, stick your head in and say, "excuse me Dr Hardhat", which of course he answers by saying, "Just wait" because he's trying to see a patient.  So you hang around the corridor for 15 minutes waiting for him to finish.  Hopefully the patient isn't using your computer to look at anything too dodgy on the internet, like homeopathy sites or pictures of Tony Abbott.

Finally your moment arrives.  "Dr Hardhat, I have a man next door who wakes up in the morning and smells ferrets."  "Good God! What's his record number?" "I don't know, I'll just go get it."

So you go and get the patient's record number and the consultant proceeds to look at the patient's blood results, CT scans, home address, previous admission records, all at high speed and in apparently random order.  And all the while he is asking you surreal questions that you don't know the answer to because nobody in their right mind would have thought to ask them unless they were already a ferret-sniffing specialist.

"Is he left-handed? Has he ever had radioactive iodine? Did he work as a paprika-splitter prior to the signing of the Ottawa Charter? Is his wife from Brazil? Does he have intact proprioception of the nasal septum?"

The only good thing about this is that he doesn't actually wait for you to answer any of these questions.  Then he turns to you and says, "Well, we're just going to have to do a transplantational conscious venothrombofistulinstagramatron.  Put him on my list for Wednesday."  And then he leaves to get the next patient. And you think, not for the first time, what the fuck?

So you go back to the patient and inform them solemnly that having considered their situation, that you think they need an urgent transplantational conscious venothrombofistulinstagramatron.  And the patient says yes, okay.  Because they were out of their depth way back when they saw the GP and now they're just going with the flow.

And you're sitting in this office desperately riffling through every drawer in the desk trying to see if you can find a form to book one of these damn things before you die of hunger.  And you can't, so you leave the room, looking in despair at the growing pile of patient files on the trolley outside your door.  And you see the consultant coming back with a patient so as he passes you ask him how to book that thing he wanted.  And he says, "Just call Pam".  And you think, who the fuck is Pam?

So you call the hospital switchboard and ask to speak to Pam, and they ask which Pam, and you say Pam who works for the ferret-sniffers, and they say ok, but the phone just rings and rings and rings, and the patient is staring at you as the sweat runs down your forehead.  And you call switchboard back and ask them for Pam's other number but they just keep putting you through to the same extension which rings and rings and rings.  And you can see out the window that there is an orderly driving a little electric cart back and forth across the parking lot moving bins full of dirty laundry, and you're thinking you chose the wrong career.

And eventually while you are staring blankly at the wall in front of you trying not to meet the patient's gaze in case he sees The Fear In You while the phone rings and rings and rings in your ear, you realize that you are staring at a piece of paper typed in the 1980's and thumbtacked to a corkboard which says, in faded archaic monospaced font, "VENOTHROMBOFISTULINSTAGRAMATRON BOOKINGS - PAM 81702".

So you dial 81702 and Pam picks up the phone and you ask for a spot on Dr Hardhat's list for next Wednesday and she says conscious or sedated, and you say conscious and she tells you to call Bev instead and hangs up but at least you know Pam's number so you call back and ask for Bev's number and eventually after much bewildering misadventure much in the vein of the preceding tale, you get through to Bev and book an appointment.  So you give the patient the appointment time and breathe a sigh of relief.
 
Then you tell the patient that you're sorry he parked in a 15-minute spot but you don't have any authority over the parking inspectors.  And you don't know how long the test will take next Wednesday but it would be best to probably sell the car and catch a cab instead.  And yes, his gangrenous foot is no doubt troubling him but you think it would be best dealt with by his GP.  And you push the patient out the door, take the next file from the stack, and start all over again.

My Smaller Half, as drawn by The Hatchling

Hottest 2013

Triple J, Australia's official government mouthpiece for youth radio, is holding a poll to find your favourite music.  You have twenty days to vote for your twenty favourite songs from the past twenty years.

Fair enough.  But it doesn't go far enough.

So for the next 2013 days, I want you to vote for your top 2013 pieces of music from the past 2013 years.  Votes close in six years or so.

Go!

Problem list

[scene: standing with my registrar looking at a new patient's medical record in the emergency department] 

PTR

It says MBA 2005. What's that? 

Registrar

It could be MVA (motor vehicle accident) - B is next to V on the keyboard. Or maybe a motorbike accident. 

PTR

Oh I wouldn't have thought of that.

Registrar

Or else he did a Masters of Business Administration. But I wouldn't expect that to show up on his problem list.

PTR

I don't know - some of my degrees would fit pretty well on my problem list.

Registrar

How many degrees have you got? 

PTR

That's also on the problem list.

Suburban dictionary

Matticus Finch recently left a wonderful list of words for me to use in future requests for radiography. Unfortunately I didn't know what most of the words meant. And if I, the Elderly Boy Genius, am flummoxed and bamboozled, what hope is there for you Readers, the mere dross of humanity?

To assist you, to educate you, to lift you up from the gutter, I have prepared some definitions of those words. I urge you, nay - instruct you - to use them every day until they enter common parlance in your everyday milieu, or somebody punches you in the face. Either way, mankind will be better off.

Avaunt - A jaunty cry given when vaulting over a privet hedge, garden setting, or pile of croquet mallets. "With a lusty avaunt, he disappeared over the gunwhales and was not seen again."

Anon - A infeasibly small quantity of an exotic ingredient required to make a particular recipe, which is only obtainable in amounts large enough to make several thousand serves. "Then, add 2 anons of strawberry seeds."

Ordure - An instruction that is especially burdensome to fulfill. "He ordured me to clean every toilet on the ward."

Eftsoons - The easterly tropical storms seldom seen these days in Adelaide. "We re-planted the garden in anticipation of a good eftsoon drenching, but everything just dried up and died."

Marmoreal - Of, or pertaining to, the marmot, which may or may not be a type of groundhog. "Your new haircut is somewhat marmoreal."

Thole - (derogatory) the anus. "Get back to work or I'll kick you in your thole."

Betimes - Indicative of an indeterminate length of time that has expired since one began playing the one-armed bandits. "I've wet my pants and there's a new Prime Minister betimes."

Somatic - Partially automated. "My car won't go into fourth gear so it's somatic at best."

Betwixt - The loneliness felt when eating an entire chocolate bar whose key advertising feature is the ability to be easily broken and shared between friends. "I hurriedly gobbled the whole thing up then sat there in front of the vending machine feeling betwixt for the next half hour."

Evisceration - The act of forcibly removing someone from their place of residence. "If full restitution for unpaid rent is not made by the first of next month, evisceration proceedings will commence."

Forsooth - A dental abscess. "I han't hum in do work doday coth I hab a forsooth."

Howbeit - Grammatical term for the long compound words in languages such as German. "Did you hear about Jeff? He dislocated his jaw on a particularly nasty howbeit!"

Lazarus Pit

I was playing with the Hatchling today in a public space when a small child came up to me. She was about 5. She peered closely at me and asked, "Is this your little sister?"

I explained that actually I was the Hatchling's dad. She looked kind of crestfallen then wandered off.

I thought it was quite funny that she couldn't distinguish between the various categories of Big Guy by sight. I would have thought that being 37 years older than the Hatchling (yes you read that right) would have qualified me for potential grandfather status but clearly the years of aggressive exfoliation, Botox and hair dye have paid dividends.

This makes a refreshing change for me. Recently I've been drawing a lot of "you look like a wreck" comments. These have all been at work though, and given that I've been working 12 hour days seven straight and not getting much sleep (due to the Hatchling's preference for waking up by shouting "Dadda! Where are you?" after I've not got home until after 1 a.m.) I suspect that exhaustion rather than simple decay is the culprit.

The fact that I was building a tower out of little wooden blocks when I was mistaken for someone 25 years my junior also is telling. Clearly when I'm enjoying myself I looked rather more relaxed than when I'm having to wade through the mire of half-baked referrals from the Emergency Department.

Not that I'm bitter about it.

Because because because because beCAUSE

Pretty pleased with myself today.  I used the word "thereof" on a form requesting a CT-scan of a patient's chest.  Being born in the late 20th century, I'm not 100% certain that I actually used in a grammatically correct way.  It was along the lines of, "Patient has diagnosis of condition X but no radiological evidence thereof".

Sweet action.

I wasn't planning in advance to write it like that. I'm pretty tired and the sentence just kind of came out of my pen in an awkward manner which "thereof" seemed to resolve in an elegant flourish.

Despite my uncertainty about correct usage, I'm a fan of these archaic-slash-legalistic adverbs. (Confession: I had to google "thereof" just now to determine that it is an adverb. Hey, it's late and I've been at work for 11 hours now. Shuddup.) So I think I might start using more of them in day to day settings. 

Words that I might try to use more often include, but are not limited to:

• hereunto
• heretofore
• aforementioned (I think I've already used this in an admission note)
• whereupon (ditto)

Did you notice how sneakily I qualified that list?  I "might try" but am "not limited to" them. In other words, I'll do whatever the hell I like.

Sweet action.

Double edged

On our fridge we have a little round magnet inscribed with a quote from Goethe, who was a real smart German guy. Or possibly Swiss or American or even Dutch. Anyway, smart enough to get stuff he said written onto fridge magnets.

It says, "Nothing is worth more than this day"

When I get up in the morning and I'm stumbling my way into the kitchen this is a gentle reminder to be mindful, to savour the world as it is, and to fully engage with reality. Makes me feel like the goddamn Dalai Lama.

But on a bad day, when I look at it, my brain interprets it literally and the message I get is: "This day is worth less than nothing."

I wonder if depression is more common in mathematically minded people?

Birds and ships

The birds are singing in your eyes today,

Sweet flowers blossom in your smile,

The wind and sun are in the words you say,

Where might your lonesome lover be? 

Birds may be singing in my eyes this day,

Sweet flowers blossom when I smile,

But my soul is stormy and my heart blows wild,

My sweetheart rides a ship on the sea. 

- Woody Guthrie

Work it

As a parent, it's important to me that you understand that my daughter, the Hatchling, is the cutest, most adorable person in the world. Fact.

Yesterday evening she spent about an hour walking around the house "photographing" us and her toys. Her camera was in fact a large rectangular piece of Lego. She would come up to us and say, "pictures?", in her best air-hostess voice. She would then hold the Lego up in front of her eyes for several seconds and say, "smile!", before turning the Lego around and offering us a view of the beautiful picture she had just taken.

She took quite a few shots of us before moving on to her toys. They were photographed in situ, individually, before she realised the exciting artistic possibilities open to her, and she began arranging the toys in little tableaux, usually with the toys having their arms thrown casually over one another's shoulders as if they were just coming home from a night at the pub.

She was halfway through one particularly detailed shoot when she stopped, peered closely at the piece of Lego, and must have decided that it made a better airplane than camera, because she started saying, "zoom zoom zoom!", and flew it around the room several times.

That didn't last long though because it then became apparent that Baby (her doll, who has no hair) needed her hair brushed, and the airplane/camera was the perfect tool for the job. She was quite vigorous in her brushing and because I'd missed the plane-brush transition I thought that she was brutally beating Baby with an airplane. As a result she got a little lecture from me about how its very important to be kind and gentle to babies and thus beating them with vehicles of any kind was really not on.

She looked pretty baffled, but had the patience to explain to me that the plane was in fact a brush. So it was all okay. But I think my intervention kind of ruined it for her because the camera/plane/brush went back to being a camera shortly thereafter and remained so for the rest of the evening.

Smile!

True love

You are the cheese to my sky
You are the horizon to my eggs
You are the bacon to my sneakers
You are the laces to my peanut butter
You are the jelly to my face
You are the smile to my mashed potatoes
You are the gravy to my bath
You are the bubbles to my cookie
You are the milk to my pen
You are the ink to my french fries
You are the ketchup to my ocean
You are the water to my cupcake
You are the icing on my macaroni

Bip the clown

PTR

Have you had any vomiting?

Mr Nesby

No, no, what is this? I no understand this.

PTR

Oh. Um. Throw up?  Bleurgh!  Bleurgh!

[Mimes vomiting]

Mr Nesby

Oh! No, no, none of this.

PTR

Have you had any diarrhoea?

Mr Nesby

I no understand.

PTR

Never mind.

Witzelsucht

Nurse

What's the plan for bed 2?

Doctor

I'm just looking at her x-ray.

...

There's no fracture, she can go home.

Nurse

She can't go home.  The pain means she can't mobilize.

PTR

Does she live in a mobile home?

Ba-doom-TISH!

Best foot forward

I went to see a patient recently - while I was trying to examine him he started to peel off the sticky dots with metal buttons that serve as ECG leads.  I thought I'd give him a hand, just to try to build up some patient rapport, that kind of thing.  But as I reached down to the V3 lead he drooled on me, on my bare skin on the hairy part of my wrist.  Ew!

But wait, there's more.

Later on I was walked around and I noticed that my right shoe was going click, click, click.  Must be a drawing pin in the bottom of my shoe, I thought.  On inspection though I found that I had a big sticky ECG dot on the sole of my shoe.

So there I am, adopting the "I've just stepped in dog poo" posture while I'm trying to peel this thing off my shoe in the nurses station, when around the corner comes a nurse, who stops and raises an inquisitive eyebrow.

I paused dramatically and said, "I think I've been going too hard with my chest compressions".

Boom-TISH!

See no evil

I'm encouraged by the recently released stat that more than 100 people every year mistake superglue for eyedrops and glue their eyes shut.  Most obviously, I will clearly never be out of work as a doctor while humans are capable of such blunders.  Also, the more people walking around with their eyes glued shut, the less frequently I will have to iron my shirts or shave or brush my hair or blow my nose.  Perhaps if more people put superglue into their nostrils I could save a bunch of money on deodorant as well.  And if they put it into their ears I could buy more Bieber albums.

But the tragic corollary of this story is that there are probably at least 100 people per year whose model airplanes are falling apart because they were assembled using eyedrops instead of superglue.  It's a hidden epidemic.  Nobody turns up at the Emergency Department complaining that the wings fell off their Lancaster.  Nobody over twelve anyway.

But I'm sure that the long term health effects will be felt for decades.  I remember when I was five I had a yellow model Pontiac Firebird.  I was foolishly playing with it in the yard, thinking that it would be as robust as an actual toy car, when the front left wheel broke off.  My blood pressure shot through the roof and I could feel the seeds of atherosclerosis growing within me.

"I'll give you atherosclerosis in your head if you don't stop crying by the time I count to three!", said my Aged Mother.  But the damage was already done.

There must be many other disastrous incidents where people accidentally use their medications improperly.  People in the midst of renovating their bathrooms filling their mouths with polyfilla thinking that it is mouthwash.  In fact the Hatchling was onto something the other day when she was watching me shave - "Dada put toothpaste on face!", she said in astonishment, being unfamiliar with the concept of me shaving since it usually happens when she's asleep.

Have any of you ever made this type of mistake?  Glued your eyelids shut?  Swallowed Julia Gillard's contact lenses?  Given a patient a transfusion of passata arrabiata?  Accidentally transplanted the heart of baboon into a human?  It must be more common than we admit.