{"id":12687,"date":"2026-02-26T16:41:42","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T03:41:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/?p=12687"},"modified":"2026-02-26T16:41:42","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T03:41:42","slug":"living-the-dream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/26\/living-the-dream\/","title":{"rendered":"Living the dream"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I was walking out of the private hospital one afternoon last week, I saw a bunch of people crowded around a trolley as it was pushed through the front door.<\/p>\n

I just couldn\u2019t figure out what was going on. It\u2019s not an acute hospital, there\u2019s no A and E, so why bring someone in like this? And I couldn\u2019t actually see a patient on the bed. As they wheeled past me, I saw what it was – an unconscious ostrich, with presumably a vet walking backwards, holding the bird\u2019s head on its long long neck. I was gobsmacked. I longed to offer to help, to get involved, but there were so many people already crowded around the bed who had far more idea of what they were doing than I would, that I just sadly walked off and left them to it.<\/p>\n

\"\"
The best ostrich photo I could find<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Later on, at post yoga burger and beersies, I asked my colleagues \u201cGuess what I saw as I was leaving the hospital today!\u201d and they all said \u201can ostrich!\u201d which took me down a peg or two. Apparently it was all over the ICU WhatsApp chat, and they even showed me the CT scan that someone had uploaded (no confidentiality issues for non humans, evidently).
\nIt reminded me of a penguin that was found on a Wellington beach some years ago, many kilometres north of its usual habitat. It had got sick with the unaccustomed heat and had been eating sand in lieu of ice. It spend quite a bit of time at Wellington zoo, getting fixed up before it could be released back into the wild (where it promptly got eaten, or that was the most likely scenario after its tracker stopped working). Part of its care was getting one of the local gastroenterologists to remove the sand that it had eaten with a gastroscope presumably borrowed from a hospital. That doctor has had the nickname \u201cpenguin boy\u201d ever since.<\/p>\n

When I was a kid, I was determined to become a vet when I grew up. This was mostly because of my favourite series of books, the loosely autobiographical \u201cAll creatures great and small\u201d and its sequels, by James Herriot (a pseudonym as I was later devastated to discover). It was the adventures of a young vet after being demobbed from the army, joining a country practice in the Yorkshire dales. I loved those books so much. For some reason, when I left school, I completely forgot about this ambition, and went off to do astrophysics instead. A subsequent course correction led me to medicine, which has worked out well in the end although it\u2019s been a fraught journey at times. What would my life have been like if I\u2019d remembered my childhood dreams? I think I would have found the cost constraints of care hard to deal with, also having to put animals down. I\u2019ve always loved hospitals, too, and that environment is less accessible as a vet. To be honest , I really haven\u2019t thought about it much, and I\u2019m slightly nervous about spending too much time searching my feelings for regrets. Anyway, someone wrote a poem about the path not taken, and here it is:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I was walking out of the private hospital one afternoon last week, I saw a bunch of people crowded around a trolley as it was pushed through the front door.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa8Ukf-3iD","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8107,"url":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2022\/08\/03\/tell-me\/","url_meta":{"origin":12687,"position":0},"title":"Tell me","author":"Interloper11","date":"August 3, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"As the duty anaesthetist in the hospital last night, part of my purview was helping to manage any out-of-hours pain problems amongst hospital inpatients. I got a call around 7pm about one such patient who was struggling with severe pain that the ward staff just couldn\u2019t get on top of.\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2837,"url":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2019\/07\/11\/caption-competition\/","url_meta":{"origin":12687,"position":1},"title":"Caption competition","author":"Interloper11","date":"July 11, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Answers on the back of a postcard please. Prize on application.","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/accordingtokirsty.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/A694E223-CE9C-4416-8EAD-42CAD398FD19-253x300.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4289,"url":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2020\/02\/27\/user-unfriendly\/","url_meta":{"origin":12687,"position":2},"title":"User unfriendly","author":"Interloper11","date":"February 27, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"The hospital has invested in some super expensive and high tech electric beds. Unfortunately they are impossible to use. I have never yet met a doctor who can work these controls. It looks self explanatory enough, and heaven knows, you wouldn\u2019t think it would be that hard to get a\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/accordingtokirsty.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/45B9D26C-17A5-4BE5-B5A5-5980ECA71A11-300x225.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3219,"url":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2019\/09\/06\/osh\/","url_meta":{"origin":12687,"position":3},"title":"OSH","author":"Interloper11","date":"September 6, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"The theatre tea room at the private hospital is so nice it\u2019s called the Koru \u00a0lounge. Currently it provides an excellent view of the worksite where the new hospital is being built. It reminds me of a house we lived in when I was growing up. It was in the\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/accordingtokirsty.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/E9DFD8CB-D5FA-4859-B2BA-C4E8FDFF85A7-300x225.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":12585,"url":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/29\/wednesday-28-january-ohakune\/","url_meta":{"origin":12687,"position":4},"title":"Wednesday 28 January Ohakune","author":"Interloper11","date":"January 29, 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"Had to wake up Samantha three times this morning. She may no longer be a teenager but her body doesn\u2019t seem to have twigged just yet. After our leisurely start it was midday by the time we drove up the mountain to the Turoa ski field. The weather report had\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/accordingtokirsty.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/IMG_5185-170x300.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":9824,"url":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2024\/02\/17\/lest-we-forget\/","url_meta":{"origin":12687,"position":5},"title":"Lest we forget","author":"Interloper11","date":"February 17, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"I realize that doubts about my mental acuity are a common theme in these pages. There has been much made of the \u00a0parlous state of the memory of two high profile political candidates in the media in recent weeks. But you don\u2019t have to be in your 9th or even\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12687\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}