A request for help

I wonder if you can help me out. I regard myself as "technologically competent" but this RSS stuff totally mystifies me. Can any of you tell me what is RSS? What does it do? What is the point of it? Is it worth adding a "RSS feed" to this blog and if I do, what difference will it make?

I tried googling "RSS" it but it still makes no sense to me. Could someone please explain it to me as if I were a 5-year-old because I honestly have no idea. I tried asking my friends about it but they're all as clueless as I am.

Thanks in advance.

A (un)fortunate man

Unfortunately, Mr Blackwell had a heart attack last week.

Fortunately, he called an ambulance and was rushed into hospital. His condition was diagnosed promptly and he was given appropriate treatment, stabilised as was put on the list to have an angiogram to see exactly where the problem was.

Unfortunately, the angiogram showed that the cause for his heart attack was a narrowing of one of the arteries that supplied heart muscle and that he was at a high risk of having another (possibly) fatal heart attack.

Fortunately, the cardiology doctors have the ability to put a stent into his artery and reduce the chances of a second heart attack and he was brought back to have the stent the next day.

Fortunately, they were able to do the procedure and he had a stent placed across his coronary artery. They do this by pushing a catheter up from his groin to his heart. This negates the need to cut open his chest.

Unfortunately in doing so, the cardiologists had managed to roger one of the arteries in his groin. The artery clotted off and Mr Blackwell had the blood supply to his leg cut off. It went cold and pale, and within a few hours, it would have started to die. He could potentially lose his leg or his life.

Fortunately, the CCU staff are trained to look out for such things and they promptly called the on-call vascular surgeon, who quickly decided that Mr Blackwell needed an operation to save his leg. The surgeon calls the anaesthetist (me) to assess the patient’s suitability for surgery. The cardiologists do their bit and perform an echocardiogram on Mr Blackwell.

Fortunately, the echocardiogram shows that his heart hasn’t been too badly affected by the heart attack

Unfortunately, I know that having had a heart attack so recently, a general anaesthetic at this time would put him at a hugely increased risk of having another. I also know that the way our bodies respond to surgery would mean that his heart stent is a greater risk of clotting if he has surgery this soon after its insertion. On the other hand, if wait, then within a few hours, Mr Blackwell will lose his limb and possibly his life, so we’re going to make as best a fist of it as we can.

Fortunately, I know a man who can help and I call the consultant who says he can come down and perform a regional block so Mr Blackwell can have his leg operated on whilst fully awake and avoid the risks of general anaesthesia.

Mr Blackwell agrees to this and the operation goes surprisingly smoothly. He is now recovering from his operation on the ward.

Now, is Mr Blackwell a fortunate or an unfortunate man? I honestly don’t know, I guess it depends on your perspective.

n.b. Fortunately, Mr Blackwell swears that after all this, he’s DEFINITELY going to stop smoking. I was loathe to point out that for years and years, people had been telling him that all this was going to happen.

Casting Aspersions

After a few months of working in this job, my identity badge has become a little battered. The picture of me grinning on induction day is now faded and the lettering isn't as clear as it used to be.

Thing is, instead of saying:

Dr Michael Anderson

Anaesthetics ST1

It now looks like:

Dr Michael Anderson

Anaesthetics STI

which, of course, is a very different thing indeed...

Update

At the start of the year, I had a real dilemma about what I was going to do with myself. I really don’t like the region of the country that I ended up in as a result of the government’s bright idea that was MMC 2007, but I really love working in my new specialty of anaesthesia. My question was whether to stay where I am or to try and leave and once again go through the lottery of MMC 2008.

I decided to stay here for another year with the aim of passing the FRCA primary (post-graduate anaesthetic exams) this year. I was also going to “get a hobby, get a girlfriend and see if I could learn to love this city” so I thought I’d give you an update on how things are going with that.

I have a girlfriend. She’s fantastic, she’s clever, she’s great looking, she’s properly funny and she’s making me very happy. She’s non-medical (she works in fashion) and things are going really well.

In January, I blew the dust off my old guitar and started to play again. I used to be really into making music, I was in a band in my teens. We were called “Alk 14” and we were going to be huge. We were going to be bigger than Oasis! Unfortunately university got in the way and, though we tried, we couldn’t keep the band together when we were living in separate cities. The world never got to hear our great songs like “Ride the Tempest” and “Old-Fashioned Girl.” But now, I’m really enjoying playing with the fret board again – maybe I’ll form another band?

Unfortunately, I still have no love for this city. I do think I need to try and get out more, but to be honest, there’s been little I’ve seen about this place in the last few months that made me want to stay here for the rest of my life.

Stupid Me: Story #4513

I was doing the trauma list yesterday and the orthopaedic surgeons had put a young man on the list who needed to have fixation screws removed from his foot under general anaesthesia.

“It’ll be really quick,” Andy, the ortho reg, assured me, “the operation will only take five minutes.”

Already, I’ve developed a healthy disregard for what surgeons say about the length of their operations. I think surgeons exist in their own special time bubble where a surgeon’s minute is the same as ten minutes in the real world.

As sure as eggs are eggs, half an hour after he started operating, Andy has sat down, made himself comfortable and is still poking around in this bloke’s foot trying to find the final screw.

“I’ve found it!” he finally exclaims.

“Wahey, well done!” I say and move round to have a look over his shoulder. “Let’s see,” I say.

“Look,” Andy replies leaning to one side so I can get a better view. “The (screw) head was much more proximal than I thought.”

I can’t quite see, so I lean further over his shoulder and…

A flash of light hits me at exactly the same time a bolt of pain from my forehead.

“Owww!”

I’d managed to clunk my head against the theatre lights. The theatre team – kind souls that they are - burst into laughter.

Did I feel like a tit? Damn right I did and, what’s more, I now have a lovely black eye to remember the event by.

Thought for the day.

Acupuncture is the ancient and revered tradition of sticking pins into
people to make them feel better.

Voodoo is the ancient and revered tradition of sticking pins into things that look like people in order to make them feel worse.

The question is; if an identical twin has acupuncture, is his brother in trouble?