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.