Intern Interruptus

For the past few weeks, I've had the dubious pleasure of yet again having interns / house officers tagging along during my rounds. Sure they do lighten the load - what with blood-takings, clerkings and checking up on the stable patients. And God knows my once impeccable writing has speedily devolved with disuse into unintelligible chicken scratchings on the sand so I'm glad to have them take over some of the writing tasks ( though their inexplicable, garbled shorthand isn't at all better ).

So it's great to have them around but it's hard not to feel a bit creaky and aged with these enthusiastic children around hopping about in para-para eagerness to learn more about the medical life. Spooky how it reminds me of the hyper interns on Grey's Anatomy.


Let me think for a minute what other plans I have...
Even more spooky when they look at you as if you know everything - when in fact you're barely scraping by with the meagre knowledge that you have.

Lulu : Evening, Dr Paul.
Paul : What are you doing here? It's past working hours.
Lulu : Just checking to see if there's any extra work to be done.
Paul : Really? Why don't you stay till tomorrow then? Here, take the pager.
Lulu : You're very funny, sir.
Paul : I'm a freaking laugh riot.
Lulu : Ooh, sir, please teach me how to do a stab peritoneal dialysis. I wanna learn!
Paul : Go stab a ripe watermelon for practice.

Of course I didn't say anything quite as sarcastic as the last bit - since it would have unforgivably dampened her burning ardour for medicine. Though I seriously wanted to ask where she'd gotten her cheerleader pep from - was it from that bubbling tub of tongkat ali caffeine she downed in the morning before rounds?

Damn, I gotta get back on the java line.

Finally caved in to Lucky Lulu's persistent requests, found a suitable candidate in due course ( unfortunately kidney failures are dime a dozen in the hospital ) and I did demonstrate for her while imparting some of my peculiarly unorthodox techniques - come to think about it, maybe I should have placed that in youtube for future reference.

But the honorific sir and the Dr Paul has to go. Makes me feel like I've literally aged ten years! Sure I'm increasingly decrepit with persistently failing memory ( and half of these interns are kids barely legal ) but that doesn't mean I need frequent reminders. :P Even after many attempts to reacquiant them with my given name, the whole lot persist on calling me by salutations - can almost feel my name written in bold sans serif on the clerking notes.

Say my name!

BTW No cute male interns so far though ( why do I keep getting the gals this time? Are they secretly trying to get me married off? ). Where have they all gone?!