Antenatal class

We went to an antenatal class on the weekend.  It took the whole day, unlike the antinatal class where you are simply given a pamphlet on birth control.  I, in my typical medical student way, was expecting to be bored stupid because I am a professional smartarse.  My expectations were met in the first hour or so when the midwife running the class imparted such valuable knowledge as:

• the uterus is like a bag inside the mother that the baby grows in,
• you have to take off your pants to give birth,
• the placenta is a special organ made by the mother's body to provide nutrients to the baby.

When she said that last one I shot my hand up and said, "Actually all trophoblastic tissues are derived from the blastocyst and thus are distinct from maternal uterine parenchyma."  She thanked me for my wisdom and all the brickies, cooks, accountants and lawyers in the rest of the class gave me admiring glances and left the nicest sandwiches for me at lunch time.

But the day improved from there.  We were shown a movie about the stages of labour which I found quite useful because simple stuff like that is often not well described in books or lectures.  One of the annoying things about being a smartarsed med student is that people often assume that you know quite basic stuff about life that you somehow managed to miss along the way.  They'll happily bust your brains out of your ears with detailed descriptions of protein cleaving but will forget to mention the bit about having to take your pants off to have a baby only applying to the woman.  Knowing that will save me plenty of embarrassment when B-Day arrives.

Wants

My holiday in the Philippines was a great success.

One of my favourite parts of each day is when my Word Of The Day email arrives.  Each one has a feature word, the origin of the word, other words from that same origin, one or two examples, and, tucked away down the bottom of the message, an unrelated quote.  The quote is actually the best bit, in my humble opinion.  The feature words are often too obscure to be of use in daily life, although from time to time I do work them into a blob.

Today's quote was interesting:

To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness. - Bertrand Russell, philosopher, mathematician, author, Nobel laureate (1872-1970)

Now "Plastic" Bertrand is a smart guy.  Nobel prize, philosophy, books, mathematics, and he was a dab hand at the old "pull my finger" joke too.  But in this case, he's talking bunkum.  The list of things that I want is short but I can guarantee you that if you generous readers would pool your resources and get them for me, I'd be happy as a clam.

So if any of you have the following things just lying around, please send them to me.

• Mazda MX5 hardtop.
• Twelve or so 25/28mm Persian cataphracts.
• A CD unscratcher.
• A barbecue.
• A fringed buckskin jacket like the one in that film with Jon Voigt that I haven't seen yet.
• A card marked "Get out of jail free (also good for exams)".
• A banjo and the inclination to practise.

Chip in now and put a smile on my dial.

Swept away

(From an interactive display in the National Museum, Edinburgh, which was trying to get children to think about how their lives would change if they were forced to leave their homes and move to somewhere new with almost nothing.)

Improvisation fail

Being typecast as Batman was ultimately damaging to my career.

You know, sometimes I sit back and think about this blog and it surprises me.  I can't believe you people come here and read this stuff.  Maybe you just look at it for the pictures...

Anyway, the other day I was sitting in with a GP who was running pretty late.  He got up to go and get the next patient and gave me a quick rundown on her problem list.  Somehow, probably because he was already so late, I got the impression that he wasn't going to get me to talk to her, plus I was very tired and was doing that thing where I clench my jaw so hard so avoid openly yawning that my teeth crumble into chalky dust inside my mouth, so I just tuned out and went to La-La Land while he was still speaking.  So the whole problem list sounded to me something like this: "So she's been out of hospital for three days and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah".

He left the room, came back in with the patient and then, to my horror, said to me, "Why don't you review Mrs Kafoops for me?"  I had no idea what to do.  He'd mentioned that she was garrulous, so I threw the dice and went generic.

PTR

So how have you been?

Mrs Kafoops

Oh pretty good thanks.

PTR

And how have your... symptoms... been?

Mrs Kafoops

Much better I suppose.  Yes.

PTR

Excellent.  Yes.  What sort of changes have you noticed?

Mrs Kafoops

Well I'm just better all over I think.

PTR

Good.  Good.  ... Good.  And how are you finding your treatment?

Mrs Kafoops

No problems at all.

PTR

Good.  Any side effects?  That you might not have been expecting or that you don't like?

Mrs Kafoops

No.

PTR

Gooooooood...  Goooooooood.  

It went on like for what seemed like hours but surely was only minutes.  It was agony - she was far from talkative and I still had no idea what was actually wrong with her.  Eventually I cracked and turned to the GP and said, "I'm not really sure where to go from here".  He must have been on to me because he just said, "What other questions might you want to ask someone with depression?"

Aha!

Empathy

I saw a patient today who kept making odd comments in response to my questions.  His wife ended up answering for him most of the time.  I assumed that he was just deaf, but as we left the room he said, "Goodnight!" in a cheery voice.  It was 10.30 in the morning.

So I said to the GP who was there, "Does he have a bit of dementia?"

"Oh yes", said the GP, "He's as nutty as a fruitcake".

Father Hood

For those of you who don't know me in Real Life (tm), we're pregnant!  Or, to put it in a less nauseating way, my Smaller Half is pregnant.

I'm not just making the obligatory morning sickness joke, by the way.  I actually feel physically ill when I hear people use the phrase "We're pregnant".  I want to grab them and shake them and scream at them.  Because are we really pregnant?  I know I'm certainly not.  My Smaller Half is pregnant.  I'm going to be a father.  But that's about as cooperative as it gets.  Pregnancy is not a collective state of being like getting married is.  Sure, I was briefly involved in the process for two minutes or so, but my physiology has returned to normal since then whereas hers - sheesh!

Mentally, emotionally, socially, sure - we're pregnant.  But saying that "we" are pregnant makes about as much sense to me as saying that "we" are going to have "our" prostate reamed out at some stage down the track.

I'm excited, of course.  A friend asked my Smaller Half yesterday what I was doing to prepare for fatherhood.  My Smaller Half said that she didn't think I was doing anything in particular.  But that's not really true.  I think this is something I've been preparing for all my life.

For example, I have developed an unearthly ability to synthesize awful puns combined with the fearlessness required to unleash them in the most inappropriate circumstances.  Plus I am pretty good at the old "pull my finger" gag.  Especially the gag part.

I have also learned reams of tiresome trivia about old wars, grammar, etymology and science.  And I can draw almost anything (except horses, which always end up looking like dogs).  As a handyman I am appropriately unskilled yet enthusiastic, being happy to tie things up with tape or wire and then forget about them.  I told my Smaller Half the other day that I was thinking of buying a jigsaw (no, not the puzzle, the tool) because that way I could cut things out and assemble the pieces into useful things should the need arise.  She was really impressed.  I own a paintbrush and I once painted a chair red.

I am great at making up bedtime stories and hardly any of them are terrifying enough to induce nightmares.  I can catch spiders inside a glass.  I can use a lawnmower.  I can cook food well enough to be able to extract grudging compliments with a few simple ploys. 

I can clean flat surfaces like benchtops, floors, and windows.  I am the designated Person In Charge Of Cleaning Up Cat Poop And Vomit, even from carpet.  I can sing.  I can dance.  I can hide behind chairs and pop out saying "RAAAARHHH!" so it's scary enough to make you laugh but not so scary that you wet your pants (except for that one time).

My hairline is receding and I have the odd grey hair in my eyebrows, which lends me a certain air of maturity to offset the sprightliness of my childish and petulant behaviour.  Like all good fathers, I am patient.  And like most fathers, when I snap, I carry on like an idiot and make a fool of myself.  Exhibition A: this whole blog.

So yeah - I've been preparing.  I'll be a champ.  It's got me thinking about nominating myself for Australian Father Of The Year.  Just look at the chumps who've won it in the past.  John Howard.  Mark Taylor.  Steve Waugh.  Ken Done.  Dr Karl.  Malcolm Fraser.  John Kerr.  Robert Menzies.  None of them could have done a decent "pull my finger" if their life depended on it.  Well, maybe Malcolm Fraser could.

Send me the bill

PTR
Mmm, this bolognaise is very tomatoey!

Smaller Half
Did you use two cans?

PTR
No, beef.

Enraging

I don't often write a blob just for one person but this is an exception.  In the last couple of months I've noticed that the little-used check-boxes at the bottom of each blob that allow you to choose between "engaging", "enraging" and "absurd" is being consistently checked as "enraging".  Just once for each blob, usually within a day of me posting.  My assumption is that it is a single reader doing this rather than an emergent behaviour of the interwebs as a whole.

Here are the questions I would like to ask that strangely devoted reader:
Are you really enraged?  If so, why do you keep coming back?  Do you like feeling angry?  Or is it your way of marking the blob so that you know you've read it because you have some kind of memory deficit?  If that's the case, how do you remember what your method is?  And why not just bookmark your favourite post and read it anew each day?  Or are you trying to inspire your fellow readers to vote more often?  Or is it perhaps your way of giving me a little wave so I know that you've visited even though I don't know who you are?

I know you're out there, enraged man, in the dark so utter,
For when I put my blobs online I hear you gasp and splutter.

OSCE stations for the real world

Having recently undergone trial-by-OSCE, it concerns me that the stations were extremely unrealistic.  Oh sure - they may well be very similar to the stations we'll get at the end of the year.  But they bear absolutely no similarity to the tasks that medical students are required to undertake every day and thus they are a poor measure of medical student core competencies.  Here are some model stations I've come up with to make the OSCE fairer.

Obstetrics and Gynaecology
Student Instructions
You are in a pre-natal clinic doing routine checkups.  You haven't seen a birth all year and realize that this is your last chance to get on board.  Please convince the patient that they should boot the student midwife off the list and let you assist with the birth instead.

Standardized Patient Briefing
Do not agree to let the student be present at your birth even if they cry and beg.  It is important that you mention the following counter-arguments provided to you by the midwifery student:

1. The doctor always misses the birth anyway then swans in with a muffin saying, "How are things going in here, ladies?"
2. On the off chance the doctor doesn't miss the birth, he/she will want to do an unnecessary caesarian.
3. Oh, and doctors are always pressuring you to agree to drugs that will give your baby autism.

As the student leaves the station, let him/her know that you would have agreed if he/she was more experienced.

Surgery
Student Instructions
You are in clinic with Dr Bastard, a surgeon.  He instructs you to examine the patient's Ossicles of Zeno and give him your top ten differential diagnoses and the associated aetiologies.

Standardized Patient Briefing
The student will attempt to examine your Ossicles of Zeno whilst being glared at by Dr Bastard. Ensure that you ask the student the following questions as he does so:

1. Is it true that they don't teach anatomy any more?
2. If that's the case then where is my spleen?
3. No, I'm sure the left is where the liver is.  My cousin has his liver removed when he was five, how long can you live without a liver?
4. So you want to be just like Dr Bastard do you?

General Practice
Student Instructions
It is lunchtime.  You have been consulting with your supervisor all morning and feel that you are finally getting the hang of this stuff.  Enter the staff lunch room and converse with your supervisor.

Supervisor Briefing
The student will attempt to interact with you as if you are human.  Behave capriciously and imperiously.  Ensure that the following points are covered in your conversation:

• Ask them where they have been all morning.
• Introduce them to someone that you know they have met before.  Get the student's name wrong.  Be incredulous if they correct you.
• Ask the student a question about themselves then start talking to someone else while they are answering you.
• Reminisce fondly about previous students who were much more engaged, competent and intelligent.
• Criticise the university and its terrible teaching and newfangled course that has resulted in such a poor student being sent to work with you.
• Announce that a drug rep is turning up soon and throw the student out.

Paediatrics
Student Instructions
Please give the child in this room an injection.

Standardized Patient Briefing
Your child is to receive an injection.  Please follow these steps:

• Instill fear in your child by getting very tense and promising them a huge reward afterward if they don't scream.
• Instill distrust in your child by promising them that it won't hurt at all.
• Overdress your child in multiple layers so that getting access to even a single limb is impossible without a struggle.
• Wait until the child has spotted the needle and has started screaming before raising your concerns about the possible side-effects of the injection.
• Restrain your struggling child until the needle is almost touching their skin.  Then release your child suddenly, allowing them to flail around wildly and maximise the chance of the student stabbing themselves with the needle.

Medicine
Student Instructions
You have been sent to buy lunch for a senior consultant.  You were told to go to "Jack's Cafe down the road to the right" and buy a tandoori chicken, avocado and edam sandwich on white bread, and a large soy macchiato.  You have discovered that Jack's Cafe has been closed for six years.  There was only one other cafe within a reasonable distance and it didn't have much to choose from.  You have returned with a bacon, pumpkin and cottage cheese flatbread wrap and a small latte.  Enter the room and give the consultant her lunch.

Consultant Briefing
Ensure that you raise the following issues with the student when he/she returns with your lunch:

• They have been gone a long time and missed seeing lots of interesting signs in patients.
• This is not the sandwich you wanted.
• This is not the coffee you wanted.
• Jack's Cafe was there last week.
• This is not the sandwich you wanted.

Do not offer to reimburse the student for the cost of your lunch.  If they do ask for money you should remind them that this is not the sandwich you wanted.  If they still persist, point out to them that the university doesn't pay them very much for the teaching you provide.

Psychiatry
Student Instructions
Please observe the following conversation between doctor and patient for five minutes.  At the end of this time you will asked to diagnose each of them with a mental illness and/or personality disorder.

Examiner Marking Sheet
Bonus marks if the student also diagnoses themselves with depression.

Power

Reginald Machiavelli, my old high school principal, used to say that it was better to be feared than to be loved.  Clearly you, Gentle Reader, disagree.  You thought it was better to be overlooked than loved, better to be loved than feared or respected, better to be feared or respected than admired, and better to be admired than to be scorned.  Good luck with that.  People are going to think you're nuts.

Since the most popular response was that it is better to be overlooked, I declare the winner of this poll to be the most overlooked choice.  Thus it is clearly best to be scorned.  And if you think what I'm doing is unconstitutional - tough.  I've got a friend with two angry rabbits who thinks otherwise:

Flopsy and Mopsy are VERY disappointed...

Expecto Patronisum

No.  No no no no no.

We had a practise OSCE this evening.  Oh how we laughed.  Eight stations, five minutes each.  All pretty straightforward stuff.  Or it would be, if you had any freaking idea what you were doing. 
Case in point: x-rays.  Now I know all about x-rays.  But clearly I don't know much about anatomy or pathology because I tanked that station.  Really badly.  But hey - that's why we have radiologists, right?  I mean, apart from having to find somewhere to put all the oddball graduates.

Anyway, that's not what this blob is about.  This blob is about the post-OCSE feedback session in which we were ruthlessly patronized by our supervising doctors who marked us.  Here's what went down...

First, we were subjected to a lengthy mealy-mouthed pep talk which actually contained nothing of substance whatsoever.  "The best advice for the OSCEs is to go into each station and genuinely try to address the clinical problem that is given to you."  Swerving that violently to avoid colliding with actual content left me reeling with mental whiplash and in no state for what was to follow.

We were then given a little finger wagging lecture about how if we are ever in the position of not knowing something we should always ask for a little lesson on it right then and there to "close the gap" rather than just shrugging and saying, "Meh, I can haz brains L8R", presumably because we are all adolescent dipshits rather than responsible adults.  At this point I bit my tongue and refrained from pointing out that, in my experience, asking questions of doctors leads to one of two possible answers:

1. You should know this by now.
2. It's not my job to answer questions that you can look up in a textbook.

Then, we were told in feedback for one of the stations that it was disappointing that so few of us knew the dose for drug X.  There were two marks available for knowing the drug and the dose but if you didn't know the dose you got zero.  Right. 

We did point out that we've been specifically told that we don't need to know the doses of drugs, to which the response was the evergreen and fanciful idea that we can get some kind of mythical "bonus marks" for impressing the examiner with knowledge like drug doses (as opposed to the cruel reality of disappointing your examiners by being unable to distinguish the bum from the elbow).  Buddy, the day I start spending my time planning ways to "impress" my examiners is the day I'm not devoting enough time to my stamp collecting.

Seizing the opportunity presented by our collective stunned silence in response to the feedback about the dose of drug X, I asked a question.  "Oh wise practitioners", I asked, "To enable me to close the gap and to ensure that I learn something from this encounter, couldst thou in thy wisdome inform me of the correct dose for drug X?" 

There was widespread hilarity.  My Esteemed Colleagues laughed because they know me well and recognized that I was being at least somewhat of a Smart-Arse.  The doctors laughed because I should know this by now and they are not here to answer questions that I could look up in a book.  I kid you not - the doctor next to me said, "You'll remember it better if you look that up yourself when you get home".  And then another doctor said, "The correct dose is one ampoule", and chuckled to himself behind his little doctor's beard.

I love it.

Plan D

So I finally came up with a plan for what to do when I drop out of medicine.  I'm going to start my own garden improvement business, specializing in building those latticed structures that you put in gardens and train plants over, as shown in the picture.  They'll be the best ever, renowned throughout the land!

I'll call the business "Hypergolae".

I am shriven

"Surgeons are fine.  I have no problem with surgeons.  It's the people who want to be surgeons that you have to watch out for." - My doctor.

Jokes about surgeons being awful people are stock in trade for this blog.  But I have an appalling confession to make.  After my exposure to surgery this year, I'd actually quite like to be a surgeon.  It looks really interesting.

I'm so ashamed.

That's my hatstand

In 1983 Paul Young topped the charts with his cover of a Marvin Gaye song in which he sang, "I'm the type of boy who's always on the roam."  I remember wanting to be that kind of boy when I grew up, probably because it seemed like a good way of getting on television.  Although I haven't done much in the way of "love them and I leave them, break their hearts and deceive them", I do have a history of career instability so perhaps I have achieved my aim in other ways.  Nobody's written any songs about me yet though.

It made me start wondering - what type of boy am I?

I'm the type of boy who:

• gets the Vegemite out of the cupboard, opens it up, realizes there isn't quite enough left to top one piece of toast, and puts it back in the cupboard again.  And does the same thing the next day.
• spends more time doing background research on his lecturer's unusual given name from Greek mythology rather than going through the respiratory physiology pre-reading that the lecturer gave him.
• has seven books in progress at his bedside and goes looking for another one because none of them are quite right.
• piles stuff up on one desk until it is unusable then moves to a new desk and starts piling stuff up on it too.
• writes a shopping list using the word "the" in front of everything because it looks funny: the onions, the celery, the butter, the paper towels, the soap, the tinned tomatoes.
• knows your name but is too afraid to use it in conversation just in case he appears to use it too hesistantly and makes you think that he's unsure of it.
• will give you a large though unspecified number of chances and then hold an iron grudge against you for the rest of his life if you screw up that last time.
• often tries so hard to do something well that he does it badly.
• bought some headless plastic Roman legionaries on eBay for 99 cents and free shipping because it might be fun to glue monster heads on them.

Do you think Marvin Gaye could write a good song about me with that material?

I suck

Out here in GP land it's hard to get much in the way of exposure to obstetrics and gynaecology.  The university lures you in by getting previous students to boast that they were delivering babies before breakfast on their first day.  But it's been my experience that unless you are prepared to stake out the labour ward in drag you won't have much luck.  Only one doctor in my practice does deliveries any more, so of course early in the year I made the point of having a conversation with him about how hard it was to get access to these patients and he made all the right noises about how important it was and so on and so forth, and then ... that was kind of the end of it.  Zip.  Zilch.  Nada.  I also harrassed another doctor I know and he agreed to help out but nothing came of that either.

I saw my first birth not long ago when I managed to guilt a midwife into persuading the mother (who was a nurse) into letting me hang around.  And recently I saw my first caesarian delivery because the scrub nurse in the operating theatre mentioned that it was going to happen that evening and perhaps I should hang out in the tea room munching on biscuits until then.  So my advice to any future medical students reading this blog is this: don't bother asking doctors for help, bug the nurses instead.

Not only did I get to see a caesarian, I also scrubbed in, which I haven't been allowed to do much this year on account of being a jerk and a klutz.  But most excitingly of all - I got to drive the suction thingy.  It turns out that when you cut your way into a full uterus, there's an awful lot of blood and amniotic fluid waiting to rush out.  So it was my job to hover there, sucking it all up with my little plastic tube.  Sluurrrrrrrrp!!  It makes a noise like a kid reaching the end of a giant slushie.  A raspberry slushie.

A couple of times I got too keen and started sucking up the doctor's finger or a swab or bits of the baby's face so I'd then have to wrestle the suction thingy free before somebody went missing.  It was great fun, certainly a change from the rest of the day with the visiting surgeon where my contribution began and ended with me being asked to fish his glasses out of his top pocket and stick them on his face because he'd scrubbed, gowned and gloved before remembering where they were.  And the only reason he asked me was because I'm tallish and so I was able to get my hand down the front of his gown.  Who'd have thought that was a skill that would come in handy in my professional life?

Words of wisdom

Which reminds me to pass on the excellent advice given to me recently by a general physician:

"Never go drinking with a painter.  The solvents in their paint induce their liver enzymes so they'll still be going strong when you're flat on your back and half unconscious."

About

Okay, three posts in one day.  I am officially procrastinating now.  But I wanted to draw your attention to something important.  Previously a reader expressed a desire for a statement of my vision.  I couldn't come up with anything for a long time but today something crystallized and I was able to summarize in a few short pithy sentences what this blog is all about.  It's now immortalized as an "About this blog" page.  Read it today.  Or even tomorrow.  But not yesterday, oh no my friend.  That wouldn't be playing by the rules.

Battle lines

Cry havoc and let slip the tubas of war!

It's been a long time since I reported from the front line in the War On Innumeracy.  But last Friday we had a marathon 7 hours straight of respiratory medicine from a Distinguished Physician, so of course after the first 3 hours my brain filled up and went to the happy place where all it does is trawl through my life looking for bloggable material. 

I was snapped back to reality when the Distinguished Physician said, "The terrible thing about asbestos and smoking in terms of your lung cancer risk is that they amplify each others' effects, making them synergistic.  For example, if asbestos made your risk ten times higher and smoking made your risk six times higher, then smoking and asbestos together make your risk sixty times higher."

Well, sorry to break it to you Dr Smart-Guy, but what you just described would mean that smoking and asbestos are independent risks rather than synergistic ones.  Did I stand up and blaze away at him with the Holy Machine-Gun Of Mathematics?  No, I kept my mouth shut, for two reasons:

1. In the War On Innumeracy I'm deep undercover.  So deep that sometimes I'm unsure if I'm fighting for the right side any more.
2. He's probably going to be marking us in the OSCE at the end of the year and the last thing I need is for him to write me off as that smart-arsed bastard who corrected his arithmetic the moment I walk through the door.

Still, I expect more of you, Gentle Reader.  If someone abuses mathematical jargon in your presence today, let them have it with both metaphorical barrels!

Insomnia

Every now and then I have trouble getting to sleep.  Usually it's because I slept in really really late that day so I was only actually awake for 12 hours or so before going to bed again.  Sometimes it's because my mind is racing with something interesting or challenging or upsetting or disturbing that happened during the day.  And sometimes it's because the Secret Cat is stomping all over my face trying to make herself comfortable.  Regardless of aetiology, it's annoying.

So I've developed a great method for focusing my consciousness and getting myself off to sleep.  It seems to work well, for me at least.  If you have insomnia why not try it and let me know if it works for you?  Here's how it works:

1.  Visualize a sphere floating in front of you, about the size of a tennis ball at arm's length.  The ball is smooth and matte and shining against a dark background.
2. Now change the colour of the sphere from however it first started.  The colour you want depends on your current emotional state.  If you are angry, make it red.  If you are agitated, make it purple.  If you are sad, make it blue.  If you are happy, make it green.  And so on.  The colour doesn't really matter, the point of it is to identify your current emotional state and make the sphere an appropriate (for you) associated colour.
3. Just focus on the sphere now it is that colour.  It will probably try to change to a different colour or maybe even a different shape but just gently nudge it back to what it should be.
4. Now, visualize the sphere gradually changing colour to a pale silvery grey, over the course of several seconds.  Hold it there.  Feel your mind relax.
5. Repeat the previous steps in order about ten thousand times until either you're asleep or the goddamn sun comes up and it's time to get out of bed.

 If I get a positive response to this maybe I'll record some CDs of the instructions and sell them in hippy shops.

Doctor Who?

Once again I find myself surprised by the results of one of my polls!  I really expected that there would be heaps of votes for Tom Baker and maybe Peter Davison, since they were the reigning Doctors of my youth and that otherwise there'd be a little spike for Christopher Eccleston, who brought some much needed credibility back during his short time on the throne.  But no...

The most popular Doctor is Jon Pertwee!  To my mind, that means there's a bloc of readers slightly older than me who watched the good Mr Pertwee as the Doctor before their memory of him would be forever blighted by his portrayal of Worzel Gummidge, the scarecrow who comes to life in a Calvin-&-Hobbes-esque fashion.  Whereas I was young enough to only catch Pertwee's Doctor in repeats and so he'd lost street cred with me already.  Having said that, one of the most genuinely scary Dr Who stories ever was, for me, Planet Of The Spiders, with Jon Pertwee as the Doctor.  Tellingly though, it was his last, with the irrepressible Tom Baker taking over after this.

I don't know what to make of the people who voted for Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy or Paul McGann.  I stopped watching during that time so when I did see these actors they just looked like twits in silly costumes.  Eccleston was where the Doctor first started to creep back into my consciousness, as his role coincided in my my mind with him getting a fair bit of critical attention for some of his other more dramatic roles.  Perhaps that was why he was so short-lived.  And perhaps people felt that he didn't stick with it long enough to be credited with their vote.  Pure speculation of course, but it is interesting to see how fast actors move on from the role these days compared to the Golden Age of Tom Baker who hung around for seven years.

As for David Tennant, the putative second-best Doctor ever, I just don't know.  I still don't watch the show so I have no opinion at all on either him or the losers readers who voted for him.  Perhaps he has great virtues, chief among them being that he doesn't have a head shaped like a besser block like the current Doctor does.  Perhaps he got the votes purely for ushering in a new Silver Age of Doctor Who.

Do any of my Gentle Readers care to illuminate me as to why they voted the way they did?

p.s. New poll up.  Vote now or I'll make an ill-defined threat.