It's my birthday today. Not going out anywhere for a celebratory birthday dinner because I'm still feeling down from my break-up some two weeks ago and I had social things to do yesterday night and tomorrow. Yesterday night I had a housewarming party with my old friend and his sister. One girl at that party volunteered herself as fitting my categories of "young, single, good-looking girl" but will probably end up on my list of theologically unsuitable girls because she's a devout Catholic (devout enough to attend church every week). Tomorrow, on the other hand, is The Great Sydney Fraptabulous Everythingian Get Together which begins in the Kam Fook restaurant in Market City at 10am and goes on from there - looking forward to that.
Yesterday was the last day of my 10 week term in Emergency medicine in Liverpool Hospital. My next term will be in Surgery in Fairfield Hospital. I'm happy to report that no patients of mine died while I was taking care of them.
One interesting patient I saw yesterday was a woman of around 40 years of age who presented with vaginal bleeding. She had been bleeding pretty much everyday since November but it had been getting worse recently. She was supposed to have had a hysterectomy two weeks ago but that operation was called off at the last minute because she was found to be hypothyroid. Anyway, she was referred by her family doctor because she appeared sweaty, pale and felt weak at his practice. When I saw her, she was not tachycardic, had no postural blood pressure drop and was not pale. When I inserted an IV cannula (18 gauge) into her left hand to take some bloods (a full blood count, electrolyes and for a group and hold, I noticed that the Op-site which I was using to stick the cannula down didn't stick very well to her skin. It turned out that she was really sweaty and looked diaphoretic. All from a needle going into her and from me taking about 10ml of blood!
Anyway, the nurses got worried from the way she looked and got her a bed in the acute section. Several minutes after lying down, she looked a lot better. She still had no significant postural blood pressure drop.
First time I ever saw a IV cannula insertion cause someone to go transiently hypotensive. Ohwell.
One thing I got from last night's party was a sore throat. Today one tonsil was enlarged, there was one pustule in the back of my pharnyx and I had palpable lymph nodes in my neck. This brought the expected questions from my flatmate as to who I had been kissing - to which I assured him that there was no exchange of bodily fluids involving me last night. Anyway, despite the possibility, nay likelihood, of it being viral, I started a course of erythromycin.
I had to return the dragon that she gave me two weeks ago. A very nice thing, made of glass upon amethyst and coated with a thin layer of gold. It was a birthday gift but we had since broken up and I didn't feel comfortable keeping it, even though she kind of tried to insist that I did. She did surprise me today though by dropping in and spending some time with me. She left me another gift - a CD I had wanted for a while now and a birthday card.
She asked me half-heartedly if we could get back together again. I told her she didn't sound like she meant it, so I said no. I didn't tell her then that I would have said yes in a heartbeat if she had meant it.
Perhaps its better to let things be and move on.