Journal entries from my rotation in orthopaedic surgery:

• • • Mr Hippie had a hip replacement last year. He has full mobility in his hip, except when he does this one specific movement that kinda hurts. While demonstrating this movement to a friend, Mr Hippie dislocated his hip.

    • Mr Chaos is pretty pissed at Blair. She’s always late and rarely gets her work done. As unprofessional as that may be, I’d say it’s equally unprofessional to rant about her to her junior. Even more so when it results in dumping her entire administrative workload on said junior.

    • A couple of months back, I was asked to review a patient with post-knee replacement bleeding. The bandages were completely soaked, and blood had spilled onto the bedsheets. I frantically called my senior to come review the patient as soon as possible. “Don’t worry, that’s nothing. Just apply pressure bandaging and leave it for now,” he reassured me. Today, I was asked to see another patient for post-knee replacement bleeding, significantly less than the previous case. An elderly man by the nurses’ station asked me what my plan was. “No worries, that’s nothing. We’ll apply pressure bandaging and leave it for now,” I replied like a parrot. “I’ve been working here for a couple of months, so I’m used to this.” Turns out, he was an orthopaedic consultant I hadn’t yet had the pleasure of meeting.

    • After thirty minutes of really going at it during a CPR – I’m talking airway secured, ventilation ongoing, nonstop compressions, multiple rounds of adrenaline, rhythm checks – the nurse kindly informs us that the patient is, in fact, not for CPR.

    • It’s my fourth on-call shift in a row, and at exactly 6:50PM – ten minutes before my food delivery arrives – I get paged from a ward about three concurrent temperature spikes. This means giving up on my already late lunch to attend to them. Today was different though. The orderly admitted they should probably start checking patients’ temperatures before serving them coffee.

    • I had nothing to do and it was Emily’s turn to leave early. What better way to pass the time than editing a photo of my colleague’s face onto a pigeon’s body, printing dozens of copies, and sticking them all over the doctors’ office? Some of them are still hanging up.

    • I was observing a routine knee arthroscopy. When I asked Blair to explain one thing or another, she let go of the leg she was meant to be holding up for Mr Chaos in order to demonstrate. Wrong move. Very wrong move.

    • We’re at the daily trauma meeting, discussing who needs surgery and in what order. The on-call consultant can’t understand why one of his patients was bumped off the list. Turns out Dr Criminal forgot to take the pre-op bloods, effectively excluding the patient from surgery. “YOU!” the consultant shouts, pointing at us junior doctors. “Tell your friend he’s a useless piece of crap.” As toxic as that was, I don’t think there was a single person in that room who didn’t agree.

    • All the house officers are in the doctors’ office doing absolutely nothing – for the first time ever. Out of sheer boredom, I ended up plucking everyone’s eyebrows.

    • Mrs Exhibitionist enjoys airing her breasts more than the average Moulin Rouge dancer. She’s severely demented, so it’s hardly her fault. She also needs constant supervision, so the nurses decided it’d be best to seat her right in front of the nurses’ station.

    • Dr Criminal has developed a new habit of inserting cannulae subcutaneously rather than intravenously. That way, it only takes a few seconds – who cares about extravasation of irritant or cytotoxic drugs into the surrounding tissue?

    • My new favourite hobby involves impersonating nurses and paging junior doctors with entire lists of unreasonable requests just to mess with them. I still don’t know whether it’s gullibility or fear that reels them in.

    • A crazy night out with Alessia led to me drunkenly impaling my hand with a sea urchin. Mr Chaos kindly offered to extract the dozens of spines still embedded in my palm. He’s not all that bad, you know…

    • On our last day, Emily serenaded me with Katy Perry’s Unconditionally. Man, I’m gonna miss her. I ugly cried the entire way home.