I'm Not Asleep, My Eyes Are Just Closed

It was 1am and I was driving home from work when I decided to take a different route. I had tanked up on coffee on the last hour of my shift and didn't feel like heading straight home. I had been stuck in the minors department for 8 hours and I felt that all I was able to say was "Keep your foot/ankle/hand elevated, take plenty of painkillers, ice-packs mmmhghtswhh garr....." I've gotta say again, men are the biggest wimps. The things that they come to the hospital with makes me want to drop my head in my hands and weep. "Oooh, doc, it's a very deep cut. I nearly passed out when I saw how deep it was. " For God's sake, it's a freaking scratch. You didn't even need a plaster on it. I bet you it stopped bleeding before you got in the car to come to hospital, you wuss. Perhaps I should do what one of my old consultants did when another time-waster turned up with a non-problem. He frogmarched them out of the department, pointed to the sign above

The Black Dog doesn't come at you in a frenzied attack. It pads silently behind you and grabs you by the neck in a swift, paralysing manouvre. It drags you down till you lie motionless while your eyes stare blankly at the ceiling. You feel that there is no escape, yet you do not want to escape. It feels so much better to just lie here and surrender. Your mind grinds to a halt, your body stops twitching. There are no thoughts, no present, no future. Just you and The Black Dog. Occasionally you hear voices. Distant cries of someone trying to reach you. But you turn away because you know they will only take you from The Black Dog. Even when at first you were afraid of The Black Dog, now you perversely welcome it. Because it is so much easier when you disappear with The Black Dog.

I didn't think I'd cry again. Not for a long time anyway. I'm hardly the wide-eyed newbie fresh out of school. She cried in pain when I tried to examine her while her husband sobbed at her distress behind me. It was only when I sat down in the office to write that I realised I had to get up and leave. I went and cried in the toilet. I felt like shit. I didn't expect to feel like shit. Or give a shit. She had had the maximum pain relief given to her without resulting to escalating doses of intravenous morphine. It seemed overkill to give IV morphine for muscular back pain. The 4 hour A&E target was looming and if I resorted to giving her morphine, she would need to be admitted. And I knew that everyone from the bed manager to my consultant would slaughter me for admitting her. If I did manage the miracle of getting her accepted by the medics. The only advice my senior could offer me was to ask the patient to try alternative therapy like warm compresses or accupunctur

This morning, the good-looking one said hello to me. While I was slouched in front of the computer, having just arrived and not really wanting to start work. This afternoon, he offered me some chocolates. They were Smarties. In the evening, he asked me if I wanted to see an eye. I thought he was going to show me an interesting case and teach me something. He actually wanted me to clerk a patient with an eye problem. Confusion all around. We laughed about it. His eyes crinkled up and his laugh lines came out. God, my heart melted. I couldn't stop smiling. I didn't see him leave work. No goodbye then. I went home alone.

I think it's rather funny, and somewhat pathetic, that the two men I am currently fascinated with and attracted to are gay. Statistically, I am surrounded by a larger number of heterosexual than homosexual men, so I would think that even if I would be attracted to two men at the same time, at least one of them would be straight. I have actually discovered Rufus Wainwright - flamboyant, pop-operatic troubadour with famous musician parents (whom I'd never heard of). Okay, so people had been going on about him for ages but I've read more about his genius and speculation whether his homosexuality has anything to do with enstrangement with his father than heard any of his musical output. So I finally got both my computer and my broadband connection working and was going crazy on the internet - checking e-mails daily, listening to music online, reading people's blogs (and hence, this blog.) I was listening to Antony & The Johnsons' I Am A Bird Now album when I discov

Makes me bloated. Gives me sinusitis. Makes me feverish. Gives me a pot belly. Makes me sluggish. Gives me a headache. Makes my nose itch and my throat sore. Exacerbates my eczema. But it tastes sooooo good.

My relatives seem to think I cut people up all day. Either they don't quite understand the difference between physicians and surgeons or they can't be bothered to remember what I actually do for a living. Or maybe they are just pleased that a member of the family is up to exciting and wonderful things and they don't like it when I say otherwise. I'm sure it looks pretty nifty on television but as a junior surgeon you pretty much do nothing but hold on to bits of body parts while your senior does all the fancy stuff. It can get pretty boring (and a strain on the biceps) but an ENT surgeon I know once said, "There's no bigger thrill than holding a scalpel over a person's face." I hoped she meant it in a nice anaesthetised manner with plenty of painkillers after. I didn't hang around long enough to ask. I don't have much to do with scalpels. I mess around with needles instead. There was that lovely time when we practiced suturing on pigs' feet