30 roundabouts later...a pitta bread and 500 mls of water...i'm knackered...

the journey to my new workplace is really interesting.

now, instead of turning left into the highway, i have to turn right instead. the distance is approximately 27 miles...just 7 miles extra to travel, when compared to my previous workplace.

anyway, the thing i found most amusing was the fact that there were so many roundabouts to drive round. this is no exaggeration....i have to drive around 15 roundabouts!! so in a day, i would have driven around 30 roundabouts to and fro. i wonder why they need these many roundabouts? i think scotland, is by far, the country with the most number of roundabouts on their roads.

i couldn't be any more glad that my weekend on calls are over. i was really apprehensive about it. on the first day of work at this hospital, i freaked out when my bosses told me, "you are it. you are the most senior medical doctor for the whole hospital." I went into a panic. i always had at least a registrar on call with me....but now, i am THE registrar.

sigh. I was so scared and worried about it that the night before my weekend on call started, i dreamt that i killed a patient. in my dreams, this poor lady's face turned from pink to blue to purple and finally, white. i woke up with a jolt. it was so vivid! i looked around, and realised that i was still in my bed at 3 am! its amazing what stress can do to you.

so on friday nite (thats when i began my on call)....everything was chaos. it was a busy day. there were 5 patients that came in all at once, as though they took the bus together to the hospital. my junior residents were taking their own sweet time finishing their ward jobs (which i can totally understand, because it was only the 3rd day into the job as a doctor).

i tried my best to speed up...but by 9 pm, when the night team arrived, there were about 4 more patients who needed to be reviewed. i felt guilty. i mean, i really did try to speed up...but there were just a high influx of patients, and i was constantly bleeped by other junior residents, asking me really super basic questions like, "what should i do for this patient who has been diagnosed with bilateral PEs?" or "how much potassium you think i should prescribe, if his potassium level is 3.4?"

saturday was equally bad. i think i am normally a rather calm person, but on saturday, i felt i was losing the plot. i felt like i needed to scream. but i did not, of course. imagine if i had lost it, the whole hospital would be chaotic. i was anuric, hypoglycaemic, and dehydrated. i only had a pitta bread and 500 mls of water for the whole day....no wonder i felt like crap by the end of the day. i also stole some chocolates from the nurses, just to keep me going.

sunday was marginally better. i woke up quite early in the morning, and managed to catch abit of the olympic women's gymnastics on TV. the other thing that lifted my spirit was the beautiful rainbow that accompanied me during my drive to the hospital. it was so pretty that i actually stopped my car briefly to take this photo with my hp camera. gorgeous no?


am dreading my future weekend on calls. *yaawwnn....time to sleep.