…and here is my first email back after my little European conference jaunt. Remember overseas travel?? Sigh.
From: Kirsty Jordan
Sent: Friday, 4 August 2017 1:20 PM
To: Wellington Anaesthesia All Staff
Subject: Lagging
Hi All,
I’ve been back a couple of weeks now from my conference trip. The jet lag is finally starting to wear off, which is good, because “early to bed, early to rise, makes Jack a dull boy” as they say. Had a lovely time overseas. Managed to squeeze in some sightseeing in between lectures. The highlights included a tour of some crypts and catacombs in Rome, where we looked around some basement rooms of a monastery that were packed full of furniture made out of the bones of past monks. The twins loved this as much as I did, which suggests ghoulishness is a heritable trait. We also enjoyed a walking tour around the tourist hotspots of Rome. The best part was when our Italian tour guide left us to go and berate a man for allowing his toddler to paddle in a Renaissance fountain – they ended up in a shouting match involving a number of locals and including several policemen. This was worth the price of admission alone, as we all later agreed. I wouldn’t travel to Europe in July if I wasn’t constrained by school holidays, though. It’s terribly hot, and the place is jam packed full of obnoxious, pushy, rude, loud foreigners with the barest grasp of the Queen’s English – and that’s just the Americans.
Not much appears to have changed in my absence. I managed to get to half of yesterday’s inservice, which is a great improvement on my usual experience. I was pleased to be there when Sarah J called out one of our paeds anaesthetists for his resting bitch face. Also nice to see the return of our Dear Leader, back from overseas where he has been personally overseeing the global expansion of the family empire.
Hardly anyone on leave next week, which has allowed me to allocate a cardiac third every day. As luck would have it, this has coincided with some expensive bit of cardiac bypass kit coming unstuck this week. Thus only one cardiac list on Monday. The faulty item is due to be replaced on Tuesday, but this is somewhat dependent on the goodwill of NZ customs, so I would have thought the situation is fluid at least until Wednesday. Watch this space. The other notable thing about this week are the three off-the-floor gastro lists. The demand for our services from gastro has gone from zero to 100 in a very short space of time, which is a real challenge, having to magic up an anaesthetic team out of nowhere. Typical of the current situation in radiology in general, actually. I suspect the old adage is at play here: don’t let other specialties see your anaesthetic team, or everyone will want one.
……
Well, that’s it from me. Enjoy the excess of staff while it lasts, because we’re heading into another tight patch in a couple of weeks.
Spot ya,
Kirsty