Hey, Anaesthetist, cannulate THIS *gunfire*

Gonna write a blog, for once in my life.
It's gonna feel real good, gonna make a difference, gonna make it right.
We follow each other on the web you know, cos we got no-where to go.
That's why I want you to know:
I'm writing about the man in the mirror,
I'm writing it to make a change (to my daily routine)
And though my writing perhaps could be clearer,
If you wanna make the world a better place you gotta look at my blog and make a -
- *key change* comment.
Sha na na sha na naaaa na naaaa.

Greetings, fellow procrastinators, I hope this morrow finds you well.

Actually on the subject of the statement 'I hope this letter finds you well', does it mean 'I hope this letter doesn't get lost in the process of trying to find you, perhaps due to a cheap satnav purchase' or does it mean 'I hope WHEN (after much swearing) the letter eventually finds you, does it find you in good health'. I mean really, these olden day sayings need to be clearer. Like 'You can't have your cake and eat it', I'm sorry, Keates, or Yates or whoever you were but I can most definitely have my cake and eat it, unless I of course eat the entire cake at once, which would be a) diabetes inducing and b) delicious. Mmmmm, caaaaake.

So it's been a long time, and I've been haranged most regularly by passers by in the street about writing another entry so here it is, your precious entry, I hope your proud of yourselves.

At the end of the last blog I was just about to head off to Leeds to see Iain and that's exactly what I did. We had a lovely meal and a catchup, and then of course Rock Band came out and so all the girls disappeared off somewhere to kill themselves while Iain and I continued, oblivious, to persue our dreams of becoming cheap plastic rock gods. I then returned home to Nottingham, got immediately too cold and too bored to stick around and spent the rest of the week in Cheltenham (pronounced Chelt-en-am if you are literate and, Chelt-num, if you are a little bit special) Spa with Bennét *air guitar shred, a la Bill & Ted* and, later on, MacDuff!.

After that began my anaesthetics SSM placement. Now, SSM placements are the medical school equivalent of 'Reading Week', you're supposed to be hard at work but, in reality, you're off masturbating outside the house of the girl who rejected you at school, or, if you're a girl, having naked pillow fights with your friends and making sure the curtains are drawn. This is certainly true for some friends of mine who have been allocated Clinical Hypnosis as their SSM which has, I believe, 3 half days of teaching followed by 3.5 weeks of 'practising your hypnosis skills'. Which is especially fortuitous because, presumably the only place you CAN practise your hypnosis skills is in bars, chatting up fit birds .

For those of you lucky enough to be unaccustomed to HTML markup script, the above thing essentially states that I want birds to be said in a cockney accent. It's very amusing, trust me. HAHAHAHAHA. Birds must always be said in a cockney accent otherwise people might think I actually use the word 'birds' to describe 'fine ladies' which I don't because I F*CKING HATE F*CKING COCKS*CKERS WHO USE THAT WORD, that's right that means you, CHRIS CALLAGHAN.

Don't know who Chris Callaghan is, clue: he went to uni in PRESTON *crushes a cup in his hand, and I'm not talking styrofoam I'm talking.... what am I talking?*

Soooooooo SSM, yes, mine was very much not the total doss-out that I needed after my two strenuous weeks of Christmas holidays. It was in fact a punishing 8am-6pm regime requiring each morning and each afternoon to be signed off by someone senior and not, upsettingly, the easily bribed janitor. Prior to my SSM, 3 things were true.

1. The only anaesthetist I had ever met had more or less stabbed me in the very heart for not prescribing IV Magnesium (which noone had ever heard of) to my simulated patient.

DIGRESSION: Dear Emma James, I would kindly like it if you would stop spreading LIES to the entirety of the medical school RE: my simulation. Given that I was the only person whos simulated patient even HAD ANYTHING WRONG WITH THEM and that I prescribed them all sorts of drugs that noone even THOUGHT of prescribing I find it rather annoying that everyone in the med school has been told by you that I stood there flapping my arms and gibbering 'uh-oh spaghetti o's' until the, in your version, perfectly healthy patient, died suddenly from my incompetence. Perhaps, it could be put down to a mere difference of opinion but unfortunately YOU WEREN'T EVEN THERE SO YOU DIDN'T EVEN SEE IT.

Signed,
Your friend always,
Geoffrey Elizabeth Catherine Burnhill

(For the record, I do actually think that Emma is an excellent person despite her LIES)

2. (Yes that's right, I was doing some kind of numbered list) The only other anaesthetist I'd heard about (aside from on O&G, which I have of course blocked from my mind) had thrashed Dave Nugent to within an inch of his life for daring to ask 'Hi, i was just wondering, while we're waiting for the surgeons to turn up, if you could tell me a little about what this machine does'.

3. I suck at cannulation.

The goal of doing my anaesthetics SSM was, essentially twofold. A) to learn to intubate because George Clooney does it on ER all the time and people seem to fancy him and B) to learn to suck less at cannulation because it makes me feel bad when I can't do it, and birds love men who are good at cannulating. Presumably because it involves skill at sticking a hard tube into a moist, throbbing recepticle. Who knows?

By the third day I was no closer to having achieved either of these two objectives. Yes, I'd seen OESOPHAGEAL DOPPLER, whatever the f*ck that is, but I had done little else. My confidence was dropped further when, in the morning, the consultant grabbed the cannula from my hand as he could tell from the very way in which I was holding it that I was about to inflict severe bodily harm upon the patient. I then had a couple of goes and did OK, however I decided I needed more practise. To this end I stole some cannulas (hey man, they're technically mine anyway, I pay national insurance) and resolved to cannulate MY OWN HAND. Those of you who follow my every move on Facebook will, of course, know the result. Essentially not only did I fail to successfully cannulate my hand, but I also realised that it F*CKING HURTS LIKE YOU COULDN'T BELIEVE.

Anyway I hadn't had much of a succesful time until my morning with Dr Vater (who, as you could expect, was dressed in black vinyl and breathed through a mask) in Paediatrics who not only showered me with compliments about being the best medical student ever to grace the earth and for having beautiful eyes but also supervised me intubating 4 children. This meant I could go home and say 'Yup, there was this kid, paralysed, couldn't breathe, he'd had suffocated if it weren't for my heroic intubation skills'. Intubation, for those of you who are totally confused by what is going on, involves sticking a tube into someones wind pipe to bypass all the crap going on in their throat and allowing you to ventilate them with a machine. I also got to cannulate a child and that went swimmingly too. So yey for me.

Sadly i managed to get blood EVERYWHERE several times when cannulating other people, so all my successes are kind of nulled out.

And that's about all that happened on anaesthetics, really, if you want to know more (of course you do) then just ask Dave as I bored him to tears every night explaining everything that happened in excruciating detail. Oh yea, and I put a needle into someone's SPINE, that was fun.

What else is going on... well I have £33 a week to spend for the next 4 months, which is going to be very interesting to say the least. We couldn't find anyone to take up the 3rd room in the house because EVERYONE ON EARTH SUCKS, but Dave is taking up the slack so we won't be out on the streets. Yet.

So ummm yea.

Talk soon.

P.S.

Donations to the 'Geoff has only £33 a week for four months' appeal can be sent to:

Geoff
Definately Won't Buy an iPad with This Money
Oh Definately
Nottingham
NGtube Age+4/4