Summer has gone at last

The days are crisper, the outdoor swimming pool is not quite as crowded, and I am not waking up stuck to all of the sheets every morning.

Thank goodness for that.

The autumnal weather is as lovely as ever. And tomorrow it will be my birthday. In autumn! Even though the air feels just about right for a very lucky English March day, it still doesn't feel quite the same.

It does feel like we are now declining in our New Zealand time; people are making plans to move away. New people are arriving. It's coming to the end for new friends - time that seemed so far away at the beginning ('yes, we'll be staying just until the end of April') is strangely close.

It's all a bit melancholy and suitably autumnal.

***

Over the weekend we went out in Wellington, which was tremendously exciting. I took the opportunity to finish off my PADI, which was terribly traumatising and anti-climactic.

Fact: Diving is just not as much fun as I thought it would be.

I am glad I did it, because I always wanted to and I would otherwise always wonder if it truly was the glorious underwater paradise type of thing I imagined. Floating freely, not having to come up for air, noiselessly gliding through all that water. Heaven, etc.

In reality, you're stuck inside a huge mass of equipment which is always threatening to tip you over sideways or backwards, a mask which is always leaking water up your nose (salty water, which is truly disgusting), and your mouth is constantly filled with seawater, and you're totally unable to spit it out because you're 6m underwater and if you spit it out then your regulator fills with even more seawater and everything becomes even more mucousy and disgusting. I have never experienced quite that much mucous in one go. Word.

The sea was extra terrifying because there was a current always threatening to take me out to sea which I found, pathetically, terrifying. I now feel a great and terrible sympathy for all people who suffer from claustrophobia. Even the fish couldn't distract me.

So after that dive I surfaced and announced I wasn't going back in ever again and that was that. And then I happened to mention that I'd done all the other stuff in Rotorua (by way of comparing it to this horrendous experience), at which point the dive leader said, 'oh! well in that case, technically you've passed your PADI.' To which I said, 'thank God, and now I'm never going to dive again.'

The whole experience was topped off by me really, really needing to pee and having to swim back to shore and take everything off (because you really can't pee inside a wetsuit). You haven't experienced unhappiness until you've had to snorkel your way back to a beach, take off your fins in the water, take off your mask, take off your hood, take off the ENORMOUSLY HEAVY cylinder and flotation device, take off your weight belt (which is pressing on your bladder, helpfully), take off your bootees (without which you cannot take off your wetsuit), take off your OUTER wetsuit and THEN wrestle off your inner wetsuit, all the while desperate for a piddle. I now know what suffering is.

***

On reflection, I think a lot of it has to do with the equipment - hired equipment just doesn't fit properly and so much of diving is so dependent on the equipment. That is another unappealing area, though - to be so dependent on zips and seals and floaty things.

It is sad I will never get to do this (from 4 minutes onwards - though the first part is also very entertaining. I do note however that none of them are wearing flotation jackets, and in the first part neither Sean nor his squeeze are wearing any wetsuits, which must make the whole thing a lot more pleasant. And easier to pee in, which I have now realised is a crucial consideration.)

I think I'd just rather snorkel.

***

So after this highly invigorating morning experience, I met up with some friends who were in Welly that day for a birthday party to do lunch and some shopping, which was tremendously exciting. I remember quite clearly when we first came to Welly, how very quiet and not like a capital city it seemed. And this time it was all a bit TOO MUCH. It seemed extremely happening and full of shops and places to eat and people out and so on and so forth. And yet it really wasn't that different, objectively, from the first time I was there.

I am filled with excitement at the prospect of visiting London on my return and having a nervous breakdown at EVERYTHING.

The afternoon was whiled away very pleasantly and I purchased several things I don't need (including, at last, a top with a peplum - I caved.) In the evening, we went drinking at a very pleasant bar which was Alice-themed, and which served delicious cocktails in teapots and teacups (I had a gin based cocktail which was made with rosewater and jasmine tea - it was splendid). You would have loved it. All of you.

At this point I went home to bed, exhausted by my underwater adventures. It was midnight. I hit the pillow and was asleep in seconds.
At 2am Cat came in.
Cat: "The boys are still out. I don't know where they are."

At 4am Tim came in.
Tim: "Hello! I'm very drunk!"
Me: "I can see that! Where is Sen?"
Tim: (airy wave of the hand) "Oh. He's not here. He is dancing."

At 5am Sen came in, then got up at 7am to put more money in the car.
Then we all checked out at 10am.

Despite the delightful morning sunshine, everyone looked rather grim.

Though I had not drunk much, I was so tired from the long day on Friday and getting up early and the long drive and the diving and then the whole day in Welly I too appeared wearied and quite in keeping with everyone else's general demeanour of slight unhappiness. There was a profusion of dark glasses. We had brunch, and then silently dispersed. We drove back to Palmy kept awake only by the Beatles Greatest Hits (thank you Beatles. Theatles), got home, and then promptly fell asleep for 4 hours, waking only to have dinner and then go back to bed.

Tim: "I've discovered something."
Me: "Yes?"
Tim: "You know how beer then wine makes you feel fine?"
Me: "Yes?"
Tim: "And then wine then beer makes you feel queer?"
Me: "Yes?"
Tim: "Well beer then wine then gin then wine then beer then jaegerbomb and then champagne then rum then jaegerbomb then beer than jaegerbomb then whisky then jaegerbomb then wine makes you feel terrible."

Me: "It doesn't rhyme."
Tim: "But it's true."

***

And on that bombshell I shall leave you.
For the sun is shining.
I am on holiday.
And it's my birthday tomorrow!

Indian summer

Officially entering drought here in New Zealand's North Island - this glorious summer (glorious for plebs, not for farmers) feels like it might never end. 

I've been on nights on O&G which was very exciting, apart from the long swathes where nothing happened, which was very useful for my ophthalmology revision, which I'm now enjoying hugely. It's difficult to do ophthalmology revision while also doing another discipline though because it's so very very specialised, and of such a very very small area and in such very very great detail that you end up forgetting the rest of the body exists, which is always a bit surprising when you then end up having to pull a baby out of it. 

The exciting part of O&G nights came with all the C sections. It's exciting for me, of course, because I'm not responsible for it all and therefore it's a bit like being a participant in a very thrilling film or similar, one where I get to run down corridors and scrub up and hold things and produce babies out of women and so on. I just do what the reg tells me to do ("Run! Scrub as fast as you can! Push that baby out!") and for the first time in my life I was running somewhere where I was actually needed - not for my brain, naturally, but for my hands, to pull open tissue and to push down on muscle and help hold things open or closed - rather than running somewhere to find that 10 other doctors are already there and I was being quite in the way. 

Emergency C sections are amazing things. I'd never seen one before - never an emergency (because, naturally, I would have been in the way) - and the time is staggering: from decision made at bedside to knife going into skin it was 12 minutes. 12 minutes! From knife going into skin to baby out and crying it was less than 2 minutes. I've never had so much adrenaline in my life. And it is a brutal operation. There is no time to do anything - blood goes everywhere, on the floor, on your face (I'd always wondered why they wore wellies in theatre. Now I knew) - you're not dissecting nicely, you're taking one end of a cut and ripping as hard and fast as you can, to make a hole big enough for a baby to come out, a baby that might just be suffocating. And if you think of it in those terms - 12 minutes, and then another 2: 14 minutes of a baby holding its breath - nothing seems fast enough. There can't have been much difference between this and operations before anaesthetic, just in terms of sheer time. This must be, in fact, the only operation left where the time is comparable. A brief glimpse into a less civilised past. 

Anyway, the baby was fine. 

So that was quite exciting. 

It's tough being a woman. 

After nights, Tim and I went to Rotorua, where we'd formerly purchased, in a moment of madness, some white water rafting vouchers. Again, Grab One. Bane of my life! 

I hear Groupon aren't doing very well in the UK.

Maybe people have caught onto their smart tricks! Tricking us into buying white water rafting and other dangerous vouchers because it's just so damn cheap. Damn it. Damn it I'm so easily tricked.

I've got to admit, it was pretty fun, and when we went over the 7m waterfall I didn't scream a bit, mainly because my mouth was full of water. 

Tim loved it, of course. I felt mostly unpleasantly terrified before everything started - had a moment of lucidity which has been, frankly, rare during the past 6 months and thought what the hell am I doing but it quickly passed as we went down the first set of rapids and then never really recovered from there.   

I pondered again just how many times I'd worn a flotation device and a helmet during these 6 months in New Zealand.

Quite a few times.

What an unexpected turn my life has taken. 

Earlier, we'd gone zorbing. (Just like that, with Jackie Chan.) For any of you who have not been zorbing, oh my frick. It is amazing. To Robert, who declined to go zorbing with me whilst in New Zealand, saying, 'well you can do it anywhere', WELL. Rotorua is the BIRTHPLACE of Zorb. And let me tell you Robert. You are missing out. BIG TIME. Because only in somewhere as silly as New Zealand can you feel perfectly natural spinning down a hill in a giant ball. Because it is quite, quite silly. 

It was probably one of the funnest things I've ever done in my life. I laughed hysterically all the way down the big slope, bouncing up and down in a giant ball partially filled with water (amazing), falling over Tim (you can ride tandem - it is great. The greatest number is 3 - apparently they tested it out once with 8 people in one zorb and that 'was a mistake. But we did get several paid days off work with all the injuries.') 

Please, please do it, UK p. 

The weather continues beautiful here, though apparently after 10 days there might possibly be some rain on the horizon. The nights are definitely getting crisper, but the days are still glorious. We have been doing some wild swimming in the bends around Palmy, and I don't think I've posted the pictures up yet for you to see, so here they are now. 

It seems a shame that summer will be over. And that marks the turning point of our lovely stay in New Zealand. I am starting to miss the UK a bit - mainly friends and family, of course. It's just not the same as being there. And I have so much news to catch up on!

But for now, it's great, just enjoying the last of the sun. 

Dear folks,

Another day, another night shift.

I am loving O&G: so nice to be away from ED, which was frankly terrifying. However, O&G does come with a brutal on-call rota: I was on call the weekend before, worked two long days (8 till 10pm) this week, and went straight onto nights on Friday for 7 days. There is, of course, no European Working Time directive here. We are so far from the European Working Time directive. About as far away as, fittingly, we are from Europe.

But O&G on calls are fun, so far, and because I am useless, I am basically another appendage of the Reg, who does everything.

Need a scan to tell if the baby is developing normally?
- I can't do that
Need a scan to tell if there is enough amniotic fluid?
- I can't do that
Need someone to help deliver a shoulder dystocia?
- are you ridiculous, of course I can't do that
Need an emergency C section?
- ha ha ha!

Unlike on ED, however, where everyone greeted my total inability to do anything useful (give propofol or ketamine to children, put in chest drains, aspirate elbows, reattach avulsed fingers) with gentle, restrained disappointment and unhappiness, here they know that no one at my level can do such things, and therefore don't even ask.

We also get rostered in clinic every day, which is so super fun. I LOVE CLNIIC. (which is good because if I end up in ophthalmology, as I hope, I will be basically doing clinic for the rest of my life.) We get gynae clinic, and antenatal clinic (which is even funner because I get to measure the bump and listen to baby's heartbeat, all of which I can do), and I get to do some scans (though all I can tell on a scan is if baby is moving (not if it's normal), if there is amniotic fluid (not measure how much), if baby's heart's beating (I can't tell if it's got bits in it shouldn't)) - so ED level USS basically. But that's fine. No one minds. Everyone's cheery. And there's always biscuits at clinic. And everyone enjoys discussing clothes (this is a stereotype, but it's true, so I'm just going to put it in here.) This did not happen on ED.

Also, I have a wonderful Consultant as my supervisor, who is this brilliant hippy-like character, with long flowing hair, well into her 60s, dresses in brightly coloured scrubs, answers everything with, "how delightful" and "that's just wonderful" in a soft American accent, and has the best stories, mostly produced apropos of nothing.

While discussing post op pain relief in theatre, she suddenly launched into a tale of how when she worked in Jamaica amongst the Rastafarians, they never needed pain relief:
Consultant: "They just roll themselves a fat joint, hop out of bed, and then buy a large bottle of rum and drink it and smoke it the 20km walk back to their village. They're just delightful."
Us: "!!!"
Consultant: "Everyone smokes there, of course. It's their religion."
Me: "What is the rate of schizophrenia like there?"
Consultant: (very seriously, looking at me) "None of them have schizophrenia. They're just all very mellow."

I could see the two registrars struggling not to laugh over her shoulder. The other day she interrupted a talk about vibro-acoustic stimulation by beginning, "when I was a doctor at an MC Hammer concert..."  Of course she was there. What a woman.

So O&G is progressing well and it's all very touchy feeling and slow going and all about feelings and babies and things which I'm finding UNBELIEVABLY PLEASANT after ED. And that is great.

In other life news, we are still trying to apply for South Africa, though it's turning out to be a bit of a struggle. I have launched Project Botheration - namely, to bother all the hospitals that might take us on a weekly basis until one of  them gives in. It more or less worked for New Zealand, and it more or less worked for getting Northern Deanery to let us come to New Zealand....in fact it's the tactic I've been employing most of my life since a toddler, so I am tentatively hopeful it will work now.

If not, we have got a Plan B (at last!) but really, I'd rather go with Plan A.
But I will let you know what happens.