Apologies for the long absence – I’ve been busy with a conference that I’ve been helping organise for around five years. A terrific success luckily! You’ll be interested to know that Australian and New Zealand medical conferences are generally streets ahead of those in the rest of the world for quality.
Anyway, here’s an old scheduling email to keep things turning over until inspiration strikes again.
From: Kirsty Jordan
Sent: Friday, 10 November 2017 3:51 PM
To: Wellington Anaesthesia All Staff
Subject: Existential crisis
Hi All,
Felt a bit bad about missing the final Guy Fawkes fireworks display last weekend, choosing instead to head up the coast. My daughter’s friend reported that I didn’t miss much, though – apparently it wasn’t a patch on the fireworks display they had in Timaru last year – and he’s from Ashburton, so he knows a good time when he sees it. I did manage to get to the Brian Cox lecture on cosmology on Wednesday, though. This was excellent, although I did wonder what all the children present felt about the prospect of the inevitable heat death of the universe in a trillion trillion years or so. My 10 yo nephew saw the show in Auckland on Tuesday, and at the end he turned to my sister and sadly said we are all insignificant and life is meaningless. He was cheered up, though, when she reminded him that ours is the only universe with ice cream. I do remember one of my daughters having recurring nightmares a few years ago about the fact that the Sun was going to explode in 5 billion years, and apparently this isn’t uncommon.
We have been seeing more of the Sun lately, as the days are getting longer and starting to warm up as Summer approaches. A sign of the better weather is that there are finally scrub jackets available in the theatre changing rooms. Not sure why these are all still in hypoxia navy instead of zombie/thunderstorm/ennui/battleship grey, but I’m sure there’s a reason. Probs cost I suspect.
Another inexplicable thing in my life currently is that the number of calls I’m getting for the duty ortho reg is increasing exponentially. Have I offended the lovely and hard working people in the call centre in some way? Some people get quite cross when I tell them they’ve got the wrong person. Maybe I need to refresh my orthopaedic knowledge so I can bluff my way through rather than just brush everyone off? “There is a fracture: I need to fix it” – doesn’t seem too hard! At this point I should acknowledge my gratitude to Rob (an orthopaedic surgeon who injected my frozen shoulder) – and thanks very much for that small prick this morning. Another shout out also to Alan, who told me an amusing “snake down the trousers” story yesterday that he thought I’d like, unfortunately I’ve run out of room to use it here.
I have instructed Chris to strike me across the back of the head with a blunt instrument if I ever solicit people to take leave or claim back OPD again. A beautifully relaxed week to schedule has ended up borderline tight, and it’s all my fault.
….
And that is all from me. Thanks all for your hard work and willing smiles.
Kirsty