Angst Magic

I've just had a happy few hours web surfing while the Urban Terrorist was entertained with an Adam Sandler movie (I was excused due to allergy- also Rob Schneider and Ben Stiller).

I said to DOM who had wandered in "Do you know why I like reading teacher's and policemen's blogs?"

"Sure" she said "It's because you like to know that there are people out there more bitter and twisted and cynical than yourself."

"No" I said,hurt. "I just like to know that there are people out there who work in the government sector and  are treated worse than me and are paid less ."

"Oh"she said"That's OK then".

Maybe I just like angst. In others,in myself.

I was running a course last week. The same course I've been running for some years; I just get the same lecturers ,the same caterers the same set up each year and you would think the fact that it runs pretty smoothly would make me relaxed about it all. Instead I ran around like a headless chook worrying about everything and snapping generally. Then it struck me ( as things tend to do regularly you might have noticed).

I believe in angst magic. This is like sympathetic magic only stronger (and slightly dottier).My theory (now that I realise it ) is that general angst and anxiety generate a strong electrical/magnetic /magical field that ...stops the...gremlins...getting in.Sort of. So if you run around screaming and shouting and generally carrying on everything will be O.K. Yes?

Bank Manager

Number One Son rang the other day .He is a sailor on Her Majesty's Australian Ship Pick -the-State-Capital-of -Your - Choice .He's 19 years old and -for what basically amounts to unskilled labour- is pulling 50k a year when he's at sea.Which he is at the moment, steaming away to a foreign duty free tourist destination all in the name of international relations.

He was distraught. "Everyone buys their girlfriends jewellery at this place Mum," he wailed "I can't afford it!"

 Why not? (see above).

It turns out that what he has in his pockets is pocket money. Sans rent, sans the mortgage on the investment house back home and sans each of their contribution to a must-give-two-weeks-notice-of-withdrawal high interest bank account.

Why is this woman a sailor in the Navy? She should be a bank manager. Or a psychologist - she got him sussed a lot quicker than I did.

Servile Genes

On my fiftieth birthday I was treated  to a murder mystery weekend at M.... Hall. Thirteen of my extended family turned up in costume and in character to a nineteenth century stately home where we progressed from 4 o'clock scones and jam through to a silver service dinner (with murder) and eventually to a country house breakfast the next day.My brother played the overweight middleaged roue' with a taste for fine wine and  daughter-of-mine played the buxom tart with the heart of gold. Neither of them had to do much acting.

Mine host , who played variously the curator, the butler and the policeman (there was obviously a limited budget) narrated the story of the original inhabitants. In the nineteenth century, he told us, no fewer than 15 servants and laborers spent all their  time looking after the needs of one small family and that family themselves never did a stroke of work." Fancy that" we marvelled as we were obviously meant to.

Hang on a minute though I thought. I pictured in my mind the typical "heartsink"family. Husband on the disability pension (for back pain); wife on a carer's pension; two kids on the dole; three more kids at various stages of schooling - one on with a social services case worker , one with respite out of hours care .   Housing trust home , domiciliary care housework occasionally, mental health workers, GP, Physiotherapist and several sets of specialist medical  services(chronic pain , respiratory (for the smoking related diseases) cardiology (ditto) and perhaps endocrine (for the diabetes  and morbid obesity)) involved. None of the family have done a stroke of work for years .We all basically exist to service them.

Then I had another thought. A hundred years ago it was MY ancestors getting up at six in the morning to light the fires so the old master could get up comfortably at nine. Now it is me getting up at six in the morning to travel to work to be ready to see Husband Above (often to get a DNA (*did not attend).(They will sometimes ring later in the day to explain that it was just too hard to get in at that hour and could they have another appointment only later in the day).

It is obvious . I have servile genes.In the great genetic programming my family got parlourmaid. Nothing has changed but the job title. And the pay thank God.

Evangelista

Sunday today and I am in the mood to form a new church.I'm not suggesting a new God or even a new Messiah - I don't even want a new Holy Book as long as I am not expected to believe the literal truth of every word of the current selection .

Not that I mind if others do. I don't even mind them exhorting me to believe as they do . That is the nature of the religious- if they feel they have got it right then they must tell every one.

It is a more subtle thing that I protest-it is the assumption that because I am sitting next to them that I must think exactly as they do about every facet of life. This presumption (in every meaning of the word ) is present at both ends of the spectrum. If you attend a liberal congregation then it is taken as read that you approve of (and demand the approval of others for)  practicing homosexuals as priests ; if you attend an evangelical service then your belief in seven days of creation 30,000 or so years ago is taken as read.

The church I want to found is not just a church which allows variance of opinion- I'm sure that is catered for somewhere.I want a church that actively allows you to be hazy about contentious issues that you don't really want to think about. The sign outside would read "Welcome to Saint ...... - a church proudly within the wishy-washy tradition."

You could attend in the happy knowledge that nobody would be signing any schismatic declarations or agitating for any reforms on your behalf.

I know that there are others like me out there. I only have to think of the playwright Allen Bennet, who was asked when in Hollywood to attend a meeting of the American AA . As the introductions went round the circle people stood up and began "Hello I'm X and I'm an alcoholic/drug abuser etc ",giving a precis of their depths of despair and often ending in tears. When they got to Bennett he stood up and said simply "Hello, I'm Allen, I'm British and we don't do this sort of thing" and sat down again.

Mary-Sue

I was introduced to this concept by one of our registrars . All I can say is--if you haven't come across it before do a google and you will spend many happy hours in cyberspace . A Mary Sue is a character in a story (usually sci - fi or fantasy ) who is completely over the top.. ..they are the young ensign who saves the fleet despite being 15 years old, the young witch with the deeply sexy familiar who defies the dark mage the warrior maiden who captures the heart of the warlord after besting him in battle etc They are thought to be the personification of the author's wish fufillments..(therefore usually attractive,athletic etc)

I was astounded and somewhat moved by the fact that our small anaesthetic department housed so many frustrated authors.The registrar who called my attention to Mary Sue was (like me) a cozy mystery writer who will never see the light of day but I was surprised to find others. I  surveyed our junior registrar , coyly admitting to being a closet fantasy writer. She is a 25 year old 6 foot tall red-headed, blue eyed athlete.I looked at her and asked sourly "so what's your Mary Sue.. a dark haired midget with a squint.?"

(In case you are wondering, my Doctor Tim Mysteries featuring an avuncular anaesthetist will probably never see the light of day)

disrepute

I see that a review of medical bloggers has determined that we can be done for a)possibly allowing patients to be identified and b)possibly allowing our speciality/hospital/department to be recognised therefore potentially "bringing the profession into disrepute". ?OK maybe I understand point number one -nobody likes to know that their doctor thinks that they are a personality disordered no-hoper with a drug seeking habit and a risible line in alibis but ???bringing the profession into disrepute - apparently just by being identifiable at that.

It doesn't augur well for Aussie docs - I personally spend half my time in chronic pain in one of only two tertiary centres in my state.I can name by sight and body odour almost every public hospital pain specialist in the country. Does that mean that I can never bitch, never share angst or anecdotes in cyberspace?---Any budding ethicists please reply.

My sibling is an emergency medicine specialist; you would think that with the thousands of visits a year in every emergency department that anecdotes would be safely anonymous but I wonder....the other half of my practice is anaesthesia in a regional hospital and part of our duty is the compulsory 6 month training in anaesthesia for emergency physicians, ICU specialists and rural GPs.I was taking a new (ED) registrar through the hospital and took her through the ED. Hearing a high pitched yowling coming from a cubicle she remarked "I didn't know Janice lived up this way"....don't ever forget that 60% of health service resources gets taken up by 5% of patients (I made this statistic up)(.A particular favourite is the lady who photographs her bowel actions and carefully pastes them (the photos not the...) into an album ;every week she turns up at the ED and insists on some hapless resident going through the folder with her to spot any abnormalities.Does this anecdote make her identifiable?)

A Pure Pleasure

I went to church yesterday. The sermon  was  about forgiveness . I do realise that my voluntary presence there should mean that I am an adherent of what is, let's face it, a pretty basic tenet of the Christian faith. 

Yet I can't help but feel a little resentful about losing one of the few pleasures left to me. I am middle-aged, overweight and ridden with cholesterol (therefore low everything diet) asthmatic (no smoking) and arthritic (which means not just less joie de vivre but more paracetamol and more need to watch the other liver toxins).

Hating is pretty much calorie-free,  low cholesterol, non-toxic to the liver and it can even give you a good cardio workout now and then.So I indulge freely.

I hate cyclists amongst other things. For the pedant I would point out that this is a grammatically correct statement. I don't just hate cyclists; I hate the way they insert themselves into the spaces that normal folk (pedestrians, motorists,rampaging gila monsters etc) leave between each other.

By cyclists I mean those lycra suited bums-in -the-air, nose-on -the-handlebar types that infest our roads in geometrical formations of lime green and lemon and tropical mandarin. Their heads are covered with sculptured helmets resembling frozen wave formations and their numbed nuts and torsos decorated with industrial logos (does anyone actually sponsor these people or is this their substitute for having friends?) (I do exempt school children and bicycle-clipped pensioners from my wrath.)

Cyclists are not required to carry third party insurance nor do they display any identification.This apparently means that they are exempted from speeding or traffic light violations where cameras would otherwise be used and if in (for example) running a red light they are collected by a car , the car's driver bears the brunt of the costs.

My attitude to cyclists is not a common one in my profession or in my specialty; most doctors feel they should pay lip service to the claimed health advantages and carbon saving superiority of the pernicious peddlers. 

 Anaesthetists in particular are prey to the lure of the lycra.In fact at any anaesthetic conference in this country the free afternoon includes a group bicycle ride wherein the natives of whatever unfortunate state is hosting the said knees -up are forced to watch the arses of several dozen whippet thin non smoking vegetarian middleaged gasmen disappearing over the horizon of their capital city.

I once played the part of a patient in a mock exam. I got to choose the scenario as long as the patient had an acceptable story for a chronic pain patient and the real patient volunteers were mixed in with the actors.I chose to be a middle-aged histrionic who had been run over by a bicycle and was left with an ulnar nerve injury and a pathological hatred of cyclists .I worked myself into a foaming rage with such verisimilitude that the first candidate hit the stress-call button .Luckily Security didn't come.

I also hate my cat.It was foisted on me 16 years ago and has cost a fortune in food, boarding fees and vetinary care.

I thought we had an escape some five years ago when it was bitten by a snake.We came home to find it lying on the porch .It looked quite normal we thought -until the Urban Terrorist poked at it and it slid stiffly off the verandah and into the bushes with all the grace of the Queen Mary. Only daughter-of-mine's fondness for the beast saved it then - the anti-venom ,steroids and "intensive care" (an oxygen tent and a methadone drip and no actual supervision overnight) all racked up over a thousand dollars.  It was worth it , I thought, to see the affection between my darling child and her pet.

 The other day I was driving into the house when the cat leaped out screeched across a parked car with open claws and bounded into a nearby tree.  I cursed "When will that bloody animal die?" D.O.M beside me said softly " about five minutes if you tell me where you keep the shovel".