I have access to a frelling big ute to go to Intercollege War with. Way too big to justify bringing just myself along.

Who needs a lift? Willing to exchange lifts for cash / small goodies (because I have far too little SCA stuff :D). *Please* forward along to anyone you think would be interested, because I really don't want to drive all the way there by myself. :D

Season 8 may have come and gone with its stupid happy ending. *grumble grumble :P*

But! Scrubs continues - online! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7euub8HKOcQ

... I'm not procrastinating. I'm studying. Really.

Today was C-sections list.

Normally I'm encouraged to see as many natural births as I can. But today was the special day where I intentionally scrub up and rock up to theatre to see planned Caesarians.

The theatre is always packed, and I always feel a little guilty for adding another person to what should be a private experience. But in I wandered, the first time with the midwives, the second time on the medical team.

On the midwives side, you're sitting there waiting for the surgeons to grab this bub. You're checking the resus trolley, making sure that there's oxygen and suction and heat all ready, just in case. Most importantly, there's a warm blanket and a sterile set of gloves. And then you wait.

Until all of a sudden, someone pokes you and lets you know that they're nearly there. You hold your arms out straight in front of you and drape yourself with that warm blanket as mum's waters are broken and forceps are shoved uncomfortably into an all-too-small incision. Then there's a yank, and a blue-grey head appears. A little more fighting as the visiting neurosurgeon (long story) tells the obs team how to do their job and there's a whole blue-grey body, flopping out of mum.

And despite the dozen people all running around the room, everything seems to go quiet for a second as the room waits for that noise.

And the baby cries, and I sigh in relief as everyone starts moving again.

"Oi, you, move there," one of the midwives says with a nudge, and all of a sudden there's a lump in my arms. I cradle it to my chest, terrified - "They're slippery suckers," was the warning - and then there's that reassuring cry again, and a little wiggle, and two gorgeous black eyes open for the first time and look straight into my face.

And then we're rubbing and scrubbing and drying and, "Dad, here, do you want to cut the cord? Right there," and wheeling away as Mum lies back for the next half an hour when she's sewn up.

It's very different from the other side. You're hands on and moving from the word go. She's down, anaesthetic in, catheter in? Start cutting, start sucking, start drying. Wiggle wiggle diathermy this tie that. The surgeons slide with experience like down a well-travelled road until there's a great pink unmistakable lump.

Slice, wipe. Slice, wipe. Oh-so-slowly, don't want to cut the bub, don't want to stay in surgery any longer than anyone has to. And then - splash! - there's a pop and the waters have broken everywhere. And then there's forceps, and I'm boggling as to how such a big bub can fit through that tiny incision. (Don't want to cut too much, don't want to scar ...) And then there's a head, and a limp body.

And there's that silence again, and I'm glad to have a mask so that no-one realises that I'm staring with my mouth open. And the baby cries, and wriggles.

Quick cut the cord, get out of the way! Pass the baby, where's she bleeding, where's the bleeder ... And we wrestle the placenta out to be given to the registrar (it's exciting, it's vasa praevia ... no, no, guys, it was just a regular old placenta praevia), and spent the next five minutes picking at bits to stop the bleeding that keeps going and going. And then, "Screw it, that's the worst of it, sew her up." And if the uterus is shut, it hasn't got very much room to bleed out of, so there's a bizarre blanket stitch and huge thick threads and sewing and sucking and cleaning and slowly, ever so slowly, layers of abdomen become more and more recognisable until only the most junior of the team is left sewing up the skin. And Dad shows me the babe I haven't seen for the last half an hour because my head was down suctioning before he nicks off with bub to let Mum recover, and I'm exhausted and half blind from the surgical lights, and someone undoes the gown behind me so I can pull off the blood and fluids and leave them in a basket for someone else to deal with.

And I'm exhausted and excited and ready for more.

The moral of the story? Get your cervical cancer vaccine. It's free until the end fo the monht if you're 26 or under. :P

I had a gorgeous jacket when I went to Nepal. Brown, thin, with fake yellow gems around the pockets. My aunt gave it to me this Christmas past.

My aunt's jacket have a habit of going wrong. At least this one didn't get set *on fire*. Raar.

This one's just disappeared. And the frightening thing is, it was probably a few months ago.

I know it got back from Nepal, so it would have been *after* February ... more than that, I'm not sure.

So if anyone has a brown ladies jacket that appeared, probably a few months ago, *please* tell me.

(Alternatively, my room has eaten it ... it wouldn't be the first time. :D)

Eyes bleeding and body aching, three trophies and a certificate later, I just did something absolutely mad and travelled interstate in the middle of semester and intern applications for a roleplaying con after swearing that I'd never go to them again.

And once again, I'm proving that I never stick to swearing off anything, and I'm bleeding glad that I had it broken.

So this was many months in the planning, as two lovely friends decided to drag me up come heck or high water. And it nearly didn't happen, after timing (both timetables and shear AAAH of time at the moment) and money and threats of ex-boyfriends, but it was all worked out (with the subtlety of a brick at times) because I needed the break. Frell yeah.

Where to begin? It was the first con I didn't feel the need to justify being there by forcing my helpfulness on the kitchen or orgs, and didn't feel guilty for just being another player. And I caught up with many gorgeous people I haven't seen in far too long, and met many more wonderful folks.

But you're all reading for the anecdotes, right? :P

( Read more... )

So yes! Lots of love and lots of amazing people. And how can you not be friends when you were married with people for three hours, or slept with them before dying in battle next to each other, or walking through the Dreaming with them?

Screw all the fears and drama and bullshit that I let hold me back, I'm going back to cons.

So, today was a particularly amazing day of study.

Still high on the feeling of being able to witness such significant points in women's lives, I went on to what I thought was a relatively quiet gynaecology surgery list.

For the first time in my life, I saw female genital mutilation, as we reversed it.

And words cannot describe how angry I felt that someone would do such horrible things to another human being, and how thrilled I was to be in the room with a woman strong enough to survive such a thing and be able to stand up and do something about it, and how empowering it was to be part of a team restoring - if not everything - then so much to a woman with such a simple surgery.

And I remembered why I'm doing this again. And I found a little more of myself.

(Edit : Oh, yeah, and I did my first laryngeal mask, and my first intubation, and finally got back into maintaining airways and putting in drips and all that little, relatively boring stuff. :D)

I saw this one and had to re-post. (Mostly because I'm not doing my homework like a good girl ...) Partly because it really resonates (and is probably the only reason I *am* still kicking).

I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.
Agatha Christie
English mystery author (1890 - 1976)

I need to ask a favour for anyone anywhere remotely near the Brunswick area.

My bike was stolen from my house last night. I need people to check out Cash Converters and the like and look for a Giant Farrago, silver in colour. The most identifying features were the dealer stickers from Canberra (notably a phone number for the dealer in Fyshwick). Last I saw it, there were light mounts front and back, and the back reflector was hanging loose (may have easily been snapped off).

Please help. It was my last link to independence and I really, really can't cope with anything at the moment.

edit : Thank you for all the support already!

The details are available here, with a picture of the model (thanks Amanda!).

Thank you for the offers of loan bikes, too. I don't mean to be rude, but I might wait until this evening before I work out what to do. :)

And to predict the inevitable - yes, I know the probability of getting it back, but to whomever decides it's their job to destroy any last shimmer of hope, it's not. *hates the inevitable negative LJ comments*

I found a neat way to recycle old leather pants, and seem to know a lot of goths ...

Does any have an old pair of leather pants? Holes and rips are *fine*! :)

edit : For that matter, *anything* that isn't loved that can be ripped up for leather (or fake leather, even). I has plans, precious!

My God rocks, He came back from the dead. I love my zombie God. :)

Also, lent is over. *wicked grin*

(Comments are screened for the benefit of those who know what I gave up for lent. :P)

I guess it's official, Jarrod and I aren't going out any more. We're still friends.

Whether or not I'm okay seems to be neatly mapped on a sine curve.

Please, please, send me some love. Keep me distracted so I don't spend all day in bed. I need some taking care of.

I listened to Live last night.

That's probably the first time in nearly three years I've been able to listen to Live without flinching.

So, I'm somewhat down from the scrawling-affirmations-on-the-mirrors high of last night, but I need it out there. I want the whole world to see me stand on my own frelling two legs and hear me scream from the top of my lungs that I am better than okay, and I'm better than that.

And I also want my past to know that I'm not longer afraid of it catching up with me. Heck, I'm even grateful for everything that I've learned and experiences, because I'm happy with who I am and thus grateful that the experience made me who I am.

But my past should be afraid that I'm going to catch up with it.

I live in the House of Music, where every room has an instrument and everyone can sing. It's hard to imagine being lonely or sad while the strains of banjo and harmonica sing you to sleep.

This is a particularly eventful phase of my life. The days alternate between 12 hours of standing and watching as people suffer and are healed or die as I try to learn how to emulate these minor deities, and days where I sleep almost as long as I worked the day before. Constantly told that I need to do more, know more, be more, I wonder if it's possible simply to survive these years.

Yesterday was a 12 hour work day. The alarm going off before the sun is up is always a bad sign; worse still is when I wake up unsure of what the loud noise is. The brief time spent with a loved one was over, and I farewelled him as I pulled on nametags and shoes and hats and scrubs to sit quietly in the corner.

After three hours of examining the most intimate parts of people's anatomy without a hello, we were called away by screaming over the PA. An intern, my colleage and myself ran as the question was murmured, 'isn't that the palliative room?'

I've known people who have died, and seen people after they died, but never seen the process before. The call had emptied half the hospital, and as an underling my place was at the back of the room and to be out of the way unless called.

I wasn't called.

From my vantage point, all I could see was feet, pulsing; interns, sweating; a woman, calmly demanding more of this and results of that. All I could feel was despair, and more overwhelmingly, the sense of inevitability. And then, all I could hear was the quiet murmurings of what I could only guess was a prayer.

And then, my useless feet were summoned to class, to listen to radiology and to try and stuff something resembling food in my mouth while I wasn't being watched.

The afternoon was filled with people chatting through their surgery, people with farming injuries, and a young girl a decade my younger who made me wonder where the last ten years of my life had gone.

I crawled home to drown out the music with the bitter cynicism of the television. I still haven't decided whether I want to feel normal or not.

You know how I was saving up those emo angry points? I'm gonna spend a few of those right now.

I really am sick of being afraid of turning on the computer. It really feels like every time someone makes an off-hand attack against my religion, or gender, or eating habits, or the fact that I can see right and wrong and bleeding well do something about it.

So I'm just going to ask, very nicely, that people think before posting or emailing me rubbish about how one gender is better than the other, or how all Christians are evil or vegetarians are stupid*. Because from my point of view, you're about as stupid as you guys see me for taking a different point of view**; but you're also being vindictive and malicious, because that stuff does actually hurt.

(*Though I am well aware that some Christians are evil and some vegetarians are stupid. And girls are better than boys. :P)
(** Actually, probably less so, because this stuff seems to imply that I must be awfully stupid for having my opinions.)

I don't have any problems with intelligent debate, per se, but I don't have to and refuse to live constantly abused for what I believe it. Guys, have a little heart, 'cause I don't want to - and won't - listen to this any more.

It's tempting to quote Bilbo's famous speech here, but that would take effort.

I have been so wonderfully surrounded by love and had an awesome Christmas and wish everyone (except evil people :P) a wonderful holiday season and all that.

Yep. Too much love, not enough time.

... I'm back from Shepparton?

Stressed today. And tired.

After four months in Shepp I'm going to miss the place. But I'm still here 'til my last exam on Friday, at least. I have decided that I am thoroughly a country girl and never want to return to the city, but also can't really be bothered finding a place for the summer break so will crash my folks' place instead. That, plus I should work at some point.

I'm going to miss working in the hospital. Even if I won't miss constantly being called a nurse because I'm a girl (despite the fact that I'm not wearing a uniform like the rest of the nurses), I'll miss being involved in the environment. It was odd; a little like I was a misshaped cog they tried to put to use. Instead, I think I made more work by complaining that patients weren't being looked after as they wanted. I don't think I'll end up being one of those doctors who disassociates well from patients' problems, but screw it, I'd rather still be able to feel if that's the only option. I've watched surgeons dive into the deepest parts of people's anatomy, watched people continue living for the grace of a mechanical pump, seen those seemingly rare patients smile and be grateful when they finally feel better, and watched far too many people deteriorate. I've prodded people with so many needles that I would have been left crying in their position and still had them thank me at the end. The system is crazy, the system could definitely be better; but still, it works, and I don't want it to break.

Remind me to be nicer to myself. I really haven't been coping with Life (TM) as fantastically as I should, given all the wonderful things that have happened. Remind me to Do The Right Thing (TM) before I go insane.

Hooray for Jarrod. It is lovely to be loved and respected and have a relationship that helps me grow. It is wonderful to be understood. It is fantastic to have someone still love you after you go all crazy on them until you fall sobbing into their arms. It's phenomenal to have a man in my life who wants to go adventuring with me through mountains and roads and rain and bad nights' sleep. It is amazing to have someone I trust enough to go overseas with and to want to come with me. Whooo, Bali!

...

Dear diary, am I forgetting something?

Oh, fruitcake. Those exams.

Um, diary, did I mention I've been getting a lot better with video games this last little while?

... according to LJ, I have not posted in 6 weeks. I have not really had free time to sit and post, and I don't really now.

I have finished my exams (and the last part of my on-campus study forever), gone on a road trip through western victoria (and stopping in heck Adelaide, no less), hit my one year anniversary with Jarrod (and found myself only more in love with the boy), watched two dear friends get married (and look ever so pretty!), gone to FOME camp, gone up, gone down, saved the world, moved house, and am preparing to move to Shepparton on Sunday.

My life is awesome.

I hope that my friends getting in awesome debating-ness with me about my last post will be patient as Lara temporarily devolves into a creature aware of nothing but study. (And I hope your'e having as much fun as me. I like discussing this stuff!)

Well! More importantly, having a study day tomorrow. 'Life-sciences' study day, to be particular (not that I'll kick anyone out for studying somethign else). My place, 9 - 6. Address f-locked in next post if you don't have it; if you're not on my f-list for whatever reason, gimme a buzz. And if you don't have my number ... erm, I guess email Jarrod (go look for muizarts ... argh, my LJ tags skillz suckzor), 'cause I won't be online.