Probably less than a year’s worth of these to go! We’re on the final stretch!
From: Kirsty Jordan
Sent: Friday, 23 June 2017 2:49 PM
To: Wellington Anaesthesia All Staff
Subject: Rudolph
I’m Kirsty, the red nosed scheduler, today. I’ve had a tiny red spot on my nose for a couple of years. Fearing a BCC, I asked friends and family for help. A couple of attempts to freeze it off failed miserably (once because the drunken operator managed to completely miss it and froze my nostril instead, but that’s by the by), so in the end I went to another health professional who gave me some efudix cream to treat it with. There will be some redness, he said, but only temporary. That was last September. Ten months later, and sick of having to hide it with make up, I’ve finally had the redness treated with Swee Tan’s super advanced laser at the Hutt. Hence, now more redness and bruising, only this time it really will be temporary. Hopefully. The moral of the story? Keep well away from health professionals where possible. Duh! The funniest aspect of yesterday’s lasering was the little brochure they give you. The treatment is described as being like being repeatedly flicked with a rubber band. I’m not sure how well we’d get on trying to explain the stuff we do in such terms? It would certainly make preassessment clinics more interesting if you could let your imagination have free rein over what sort of ancient tortures the more painful aspects of our treatments resemble. “your arm will feel like it’s being squeezed by a boa constrictor, you will feel as if you are being smothered by a pillow, you will feel as if someone’s been reaming out your throat with a toilet brush while you’ve been asleep…” Actually a young relative of mine was describing to me in great detail her first brazillian this week, which I was going to share, but I’m afraid that would be going a bit too far. Even I have limits to my oversharing.
Monday
Aruntha is DA in the morning, and Mark in the afternoon. I’m not sure how well these split DA shifts work, but I haven’t had any feedback so will keep doing it when it seems the best option. My gut instinct is that there could be continuity problems, and it might confuse people; but I believe in evidence based scheduling, so here it stays.
Our TAVI (transcatheter aortic valve implantation) program has recently been given the go ahead, much to the dismay of your poor scheduling team (actually only me as everything is on a week one*). Sheila is graciously attending the inaugural cardiac planning meeting this afternoon. Somehow we will now be staffing these, some extra preassessment time, and then the actual sessions. It is a great leap forward though, and I should just stop whining.
Wednesday
Less people around today than in the draft version of the schedule, for a number of reasons of various degrees of lameness*, so no cardiac third after all.
Thursday
I am DA all day and evening. I’ve given up fighting my destiny, which is obviously: those who can, do; and those who can’t, supervise.
Jeremy’s day is still up in the air. Could be here or Kene, but there will be some preassessment there somewhere. It depends on whether the eye surgeon who fell over yesterday and broke his arm will be up to operating by then.
Friday
The Tait gyne list in OT 11 is now only half a day, and gastro have gratefully accepted the challenge of flushing out enough patients to fill a short notice pm colonoscopy list (see what I did there?)
Kirsty.
*insert disgruntled face emoji here