20140424
hello! realised that the last time i blogged was like 11 days ago haha. ;p all unintentional though, it's just been really busy.
good friday and easter have come and gone. my mother arrived on the thursday before good friday and i called in sick that night because i didn't want to be too exhausted with all the driving around and meeting people. ha. i had "gastro."
j and i picked her up from the airport and we went to hammer and tong for brunch. my mother thought the soft shell crab burger was good, but j and i thought it was rather substandard that day. j's second crab was really tiny too. went to chaddy for a bit and went to try on rings again haha. even more determined to get that one now. ;p so pretty!
drove to geelong in the evening so my mother could see my house and my cat, even though i wasn't going to work. becks was his usual charming self and my mother has fallen in love with him. overnight he slept on my as usual but kept going over to walk on my mother when i changed positions haha. she says he is too heavy (he weighs 5.5kg).
drove back to clayton in the morning after a short drive around geelong. had a leftover lunch with j before he went off for his easter drama rehearsal and my mother went off to have lunch with her friend. baked some ham and cheese filled buns and then drove to the airport to pick the abalone up. feels like such a long time since i drove to the airport.
came back home and cooked dinner for the colin boys + my mother. went for power praise in church. came home and chopped mushrooms (and the boys chopped onions).
woke up at 3.30am for a (supposed) 4.30am start for the ccm wilsons prom trip. i don't understand why people don't think:
oh, i'm going for a 2.5 hour car ride, i should use the toilet before i get into the car. when we stopped for a toilet break after only an hour's drive, the whole world needed to use the toilet. -.- seriously? so in the end we only got to wilsons prom at like 8.30am. D: i could have slept till 5.30am and driven there myself and gotten there when we did. just saying. i get super annoyed by people who aren't considerate of other people's time. eg. stopping every 5 seconds to take photos for 15 minutes. !!! you are wasting everyone's time.
walked from somewhere to tongue point and then to darby river. was super tired by then and it was all rainy while we had our korean bbq lunch at the tidal river campsite. in the end we went to squeaky beach instead of mount oberon. would have loved to have climbed mount oberon (even though i've been up there twice already), the view is so amazing. but oh well, after that first walk i wouldn't have been able to do it anyway.
james left early for set up with graham so i took over driving his car. followed j and shona, who both drove so fast it was quite scary. sent ryan home, pumped petrol, then followed j to caulfield and the city to send people home. dabaoed nasi lemak from nasi lemak house on the way back. could barely walk by then.
woke up early for easter sunday breakfast with my mother, the abalone, and steph at three bags full. thought we'd be the first ones there but there was already a few groups of people waiting for it to open at 8am. had the eggs ben, which was okay, nothing spectacular.
went back to church for easter service. videoed the entire easter drama, which lasted half an hour. got lots of thumbs and fingers in there too, oh well.
went home after church lunch to rest a bit. uncle ho came to pick my mother up and then i drove back to geelong to work.
finally finished my 4 birth suite nights and i am so glad it's over. birth suite nights seem so much longer than med nights because we start at 8pm instead of 9pm, and work starts straightaway (as opposed to ~10pm on med nights after a staggered handover). it just feels like it goes on forever. night 1, 3, and 4 were reasonably quiet, and night 2 was busy.
being on o&g again makes me feel really stupid. i can barely remember any o&g and when i handover i keep forgetting to say important things even though i know it perfectly well in my head. -.- eg. an antenate comes in with PV bleeding and i forgot to say what the speculum exam showed. sigh. hopefully it will get better. at least i'm on days next week. and now i have 4 days off yay!
we were meant to go and take our engagement photos tomorrow but unfortunately it's been hijacked by people getting baptised. even though we planned this ages ago. am still rather annoyed that my sunny anzac friday has to be replaced by gloomy rainy saturday. if it happens at all.
oh and i went to perm my hair on the wednesday before good friday, at a newly opened korean place in south yarra. used a groupon voucher. they actually started really high up but as usual, my hair didn't end up being very curly at all. even so, i'm quite tired of people giving me that look when they asked if i permed my hair and i say yes. my hair is just really resistant to digital perming, i only wanted more volume, you don't have to look so aghast because it isn't very curly. it's already a huge improvement from what it was before. -.-
anyway. j came to visit me on tuesday! :) well, he drove up on monday night after i'd gone to work. and he cooked bak kut teh for us overnight yay! yum. :) then he hung around studying/ watching tv/ playing with the cat while i mostly slept the whole day. when working 12.5 hour nights i just have to get whatever sleep i can. :\
okay this was mostly a long rant. things have just been annoying the last week. time to sleep and hopefully enjoy my four days off. realised that i'll be back in singapore in a week! just for 24 hours, but then again in a week after that haha. my mother is even keeping her coles fuel docket for me haha. expires may 20. okay goodnight.
10:45 am
20140413
friday
did housework in the morning. woke up early to get the first load of laundry into the washing machine so i would be able to get to the alfred by 1pm to pick j up. turns out he was late anyway. -.-
washed all the bedlinen plus some clothes, vacuumed the floor, cleaned the litter trays, and showered the cat. attempted to watch some tv while waiting for the clothes to be washed, but there was nothing to watch. the cat is getting better at being showered.
unfortunately i know i'm going to have to redo all the housework tomorrow because the cat will have messed things up/ gotten his fur and litter all over the floor. hopefully he won't have peed into the sink this time (i attempted to cover it up) (the agent is coming to inspect my house on wed).
drove back to pick j up but he was 45 minutes late!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! therefore he owes me 16 presents.
went to have dinner at nando's with the extended lg (half of which i don't know) and sat around while they bowled. thankfully they didn't get around to playing laser tag.
saturday
went to over easy for breakfast with j because there was a voucher in the entertainment book. i originally wanted to go to snow pony but he didn't think the menu was very appetising. the guy who served us was rather interesting, but in an overbearing kind of way. had the eggs ben and corn fritters, which were not bad. i just don't like the feel of the cafe though.
watched the lego movie at chaddy after. it was so zzz, nearly can't believe i watched it. -.- all i got out of it was:
everything is awesome. wanted to shop a bit but felt bad because j wanted to go home and do work.
wasn't going to make the cheese buns again because there wasn't church lunch, but j wanted to eat them, so i did. used the heater to help proof the dough haha. this batch wasn't as good as the last one, hmm. :\
sunday
went for caelan's funeral service after church. i have never been to a funeral for a baby before. D: it was so sad! i cannot imagine if i ever have to go through that.
11:25 pm
20140410
night 7 of 7
yay so glad med nights are over! it was a good 7 nights. got at least 2 hours of sleep each night and got to watch lots of Suits. nearly finished the whole season, in fact.
came home and had scrambled eggs, then went to sleep. went back to the hospital at 6.30pm for the o&g orientation session that mark (one of the current residents, who's doing his advanced dip obs) organised.
it was good. like returning to a language that used to be familiar haha. except that they use things called actim prom and actim partus instead of amnisure and ffn. and i'm not entirely sure that they are the same things. plus they use 16g cannulas. D: ouch.
finally learnt to tie knots using my hands. ibby never had the time to teach me so i always had to do instrumental ties. which is not the most convenient for perineal suturing. practised repairing a second degree tear on ox tongues. he taught us exactly the same way i was taught, so it wasn't too difficult.
i do realise that i'm starting off the rotation about a mile ahead of the other residents. hopefully that will not mean that the regs expect too much from me hmm. at least i've done VEs, ARMs, scalp clips, and heaps of specs.
m: of course the woman will be in stirrups so it'll be easier to see.
e: nothing is obvious to us at this stage!
went to resi's to download all the o&g protocols off the intranet hur hur. as if i will actually read them. though i probably should read some, since i'm starting off on nights.
11:23 pm
20140408
night 5 of 7.
5 good nights in a row? what? ;p it wasn't as quiet as the previous few nights - i was wandering around between ED and the wards until about 3am, but i still managed to get a couple of hours of sleep after watching some Suits.
had to do a stroke admission - my first. didn't like the stroke pathway form i had to fill in. did a dysphagia test. that admission took forever.
went to see a patient with an altered conscious state - diagnosis was ?stroke ?seizure ?encephalitis. very strange. she's had a couple of episodes previously. she was a bit agitated but i didn't really want to give her anything given that we didn't really know what was going on and she had an altered conscious state. thankfully we managed to get her to lie back down and go to sleep.
discovered this song a while ago but didn't think much of it at the time. rediscovered it recently and was asking j what he thought about it as a march in song. ;p it's a fast, happy sort of song... wasn't sure if it would be too fast. he said that since i walk fast anyway, i should be able to pull it off. ;p
finally worked out how to centralise everything yayyy. :) time to sleep.
2 nights to go.
9:52 am
20140407
night 4 of 7 (hump night!) was the best night ever.
i did a couple of admissions which, in my opinion, were unnecessary - one was a TIA who was being monitored overnight for AF, and the other was a haematemasis who i think had a mallory weiss tear. the woman with the TIA was kept in ED overnight because there were no ward beds, and she would be discharged in the morning. the woman with the haematemasis was kept in ED overnight for the same reason, and was transferred to the private hospital in the morning. so since they were in ED the entire time, i didn't actually have to admit them. -.- not that i minded that much.
did a few IV fluid orders and a couple of patient reviews. up on BC6N jane told me, "nothing much is happening up here tonight." ;p i also got to tell that nurse i thought she did a good job with the unblocking of the catheter the previous night. she said she thought so too haha.
went back down to resi's and watched some Suits. printed another 3 sheets of invitations. decided that it was time to go and sleep at about 3.30am. slept till 6.50am and decided to get up because it was bright (and surg people would start coming in soon). halfway while i was sleeping i heard the others talking about me sleeping. hinna said "i can never hear fawn when she's sleeping. i can't even see her." ;p because i hide in the back corner wrapped up in a doona haha. also, yoshi snores. but i must have been pretty out of it because i didn't even hear him.
didn't get any pages after that too. so i worked out that i probably didn't get paged for 5 hours. :O how amazing is that? i kept waking up to check my pager too, but it kept saying NO MSEG. i thought it was broken. thought it was going to be a bad night because ED was a madhouse, but after a while i realised that most of the patients had been there for ages, and it just looked bad because there was a bed block upstairs.
we both didn't have anything to handover so we left at like 8am haha. let the cat out for a short walk since i got home early and wasn't tired. attempted to make a wedding tumblr but tumblr html code is really confusing. it doesn't seem to work the way i remembered when i did my blogger templates last time. :|
3 nights to go.
8:35 pm
20140406
like peanuts, and paydays, and marley, and reggae
night 3 of 7. having 3 quietish nights in a row is quite a strange feeling. makes me feel like it's the calm before the storm, but i've learnt not to think of it that way since there's nothing i can do about it anyway.
was really amazed by one of the nurses last night. she spent an hour trying to flush out a patient's blocked catheter. they called me about it because he was in a lot of pain, so i gave him diaz and endone, but really didn't want to take the catheter out because they'd had a lot of trouble putting it in (the urology reg had to do it) and he didn't do well with his previous trial of void. but after working at it for an hour, the nurse managed to unblock it. i could never be a nurse.
admitted a patient who had been in status epilepticus and another one in DKA. then at like 7.45am i was asked to do a neuro admission (focal seizures) even though a bed had been requested for the patient at like 5.40am. -.- tell me earlier mah. plus even after i went down to ED i had to wait for him to come back from CT.
it was also really depressing when it got to 3am and it magically became 2am again. :( :( the night felt a lot longer. yes, i count down the hours. every night.
i wake up at 2+pm every day and can't go back to sleep after that. this week has been exhausting so far, and there are still 4 nights to go.
8:29 pm
20140405
night 2 of 7.
the shift itself was pretty good, aside from the 2 impossible cannulations i was asked to do on dehydrated people with no veins.
but it was probably the worst night shift i've had ever. didn't have enough sleep yesterday so i had a bad headache. tried to sleep it off but was paged to go and review a tachypnoeic patient. when i got upstairs i got what felt like a hot flush, and became very nauseated. went to see the patient anyway, but had to leave halfway because i was dry retching. D:
tried to find an emesis bag on my own but couldn't. contemplated asking the nurses for ondansetron. contemplated calling someone to tell them that i couldn't finish the shift. contemplated calling in sick the next night. recovered my composure after a while and went back to finish assessing the patient.
went back to sleep after that but was paged to do another cannulation. the guy had contact precautions so i had to glove and gown. felt really hot again and the nausea came back, but it wasn't as bad the second time. went back to sleep for another hour and felt better after that.
came home and went straight to bed, but didn't manage to get that much sleep either today. and tonight, while everyone is blissfully unaware of the extra hour they get at 3am, i get to work an extra hour. fun.
11:37 pm
20140404
night 1 of 7.
it was actually a really good first night. did 2 admissions - 1 at the beginning of the shift, and 1 at the end (status epilepticus and ?oesophageal variceal bleed). did other small jobs, including 1 venepuncture and 1 cannulation.
thought to myself halfway through the night that it's true, you do get the hang of it. haha. tim, the nurse who was up in bw7 the previous week, was down in hw2 last night. he was happy to see me haha. he was the one who had the patient who was ridiculously difficult to catheterise the other night.
did some cutting and pasting of double sided tape. even managed to watch an episode of once upon a time. slept for two short stretches before people started waking up at 6 and it got a bit busier again.
came home and ate and slept. only managed to really sleep from 10.45am to about 2.20pm and then didn't get much after that, so i feel a bit like a zombie already now. hoping for another quiet night.
managed to coerce j into registering for gpce so we are going on our little holiday to sydney! yay.
apparently the yellow pepper kitchenaid was out of stock. :( they only had green or pink, so i went with pink.
it seems i never go very long without having an ulcer in my mouth these days. :(
8:41 pm
20140403
ahhh work starts in 30 mins. :( :( :(
sent j to the train station this morning, then came back and moved back upstairs to his room (we migrated downstairs to the living room the last 2 nights because it was too hot upstairs). lazed in bed till 12+.
went to uni to get peri peri chicken, then drove back to geelong. ate the chips on the way. went to pick up the forever new stuff from the post office. i quite like the other dress that i got with the bridesmaids dresses, think i will wear that to lois' wedding haha.
went back to bed and got maybe 2-3 hours interrupted sleep. got up, had the peri peri chicken for dinner, and showered. still feel tired and headachey.
after a week off i always feel like i don't know how to do my job anymore. :\ not sure if i'm meant to be doing gen med or spec med either. ugh 7 nights is too many. :( :( :(
8:36 pm
last day :(
can't believe we start nights again tomorrow. can just imagine everyone's depressed faces.
woke up to send j to the train station. came back and put my entire o&g roster on my google calendar so i wouldn't keep forgetting my swaps. then i made some bunting. had some trouble with the sewing machine initially but got better. i never liked sewing in home econs.
and lunch and then cut up the tracing paper while watching the good wife. j texted to say that he was coming back early, so i went to pick him up from huntingdale and we went to papparich in glen for lunch. the whole time we were each raging about different things - i was complaining about my stolen kfc, and he was complaining about how they gave him too little beef.
came home and redesigned the wedding invitations so they're easier to sew. ;p j did a couple haha. i was really worried that he was going to get a needlestick from using the sewing machine, but it turns out he sews straighter than i do haha. he's very proud of himself.
went to be a spectator ion at the easter drama rehearsal (yes, ten years on and i am still using the term "spectator ion"). it was really interesting to watch it take shape. min yi is a really good director. though i still think the script/ storyline is a bit unrealistic. plus i think it is really weird and unnatural to refer to yourself by name when you're talking to other people?
oh and it turns out i have to work 3-4 may because that's what i was swapping with anita. -.- so i had to change my flights such that i only have 24 hours in sg the first time haha. to be completely honest it isn't such a big deal for me, particularly since i have another week in sg almost immediately after. as daniel says,
if you have the money, why not? and as cheryl says,
don't think too much, just do it!
anita also swapped 1 may and 18 april with me so i am really quite happy. hoping that cazz will swap 2 may with me, then i don't have to call in sick at all. save my sick leave for another time haha. this also means i can go to wilsons prom yayyy. ;p i mean we.
12:27 am
20140401
hello a p r i l
today was a bit more productive than yesterday.
slept in because j drove himself to the alfred this morning. got up at 10ish and went to the glen to get stuff from lincraft and woolies.
j texted to say that he wasn't feeling well and was going home early, so i got stuff to make porridge for him too.
cooked porridge, had my own dabaoed lunch, and then baked
Peeta's stuffed cheese buns. they were surprisingly easy to make. kneaded the dough for a bit, then put it out in the sun to proof. :) i thought we weren't seeing anymore of these 30+deg days anymore but apparently there are still a few here and there. :)
was really happy with how the buns turned out. it's the first time i can say that i successfully baked bread. loved the texture of the bread too, so soft and fluffy. :D the only thing was that i put too much mozzarella in the middle so it was too cheesy for my liking. baked 20 and there are 5 left now. ;p
finished reading The Storyteller. as with all Jodi Picoult books, i loved this one. interestingly, it's about the holocaust, which is something i normally wouldn't choose to read about. though to be honest i didn't know it was about the holocaust when i bought it.
it is such a struggle sometimes. on one hand, how could you fault someone for choosing to go to a
prayer meeting? on the other hand....
11:31 pm