A & E

"Outside a new day is dawning. Outside surburbia's crawling everywhere."
-Kim Wilde
Doing A&E at the moment. In an area of the city where even the name of the place is a buzzword for middle-class. But I love every second. It's an almost palpable pleasure to be somewhere so organised that patients honestly don't have to wait more than an hour, even for very minor stuff, and for anything serious it's immediately. If they need a specialist to see them, they get seen. If they need to have a scan, they get scanned. It's delicious! The NHS really can work!
I lov every second of A&E. It's brutal and ugly and beautiful and visceral and it's so interesting compared to other specialities. I think I'm going to at least try to go into it as a speciality. You meet fascinating people - from the self-confessed landowner who had cut his hand on his chainsaw and joked that he should be greeted with a bottle of Moet every time he comes as his taxes alone pay for the place. Tee hee! What a prat! To the alcoholic man, fitting from withdrawal, trembling involuntarily under every touch of my hand. To the woman from Myanmar, who didn't actually know the difference between an A&E and a GP. To the childs arm so broken from a trampoline tumble that he had a new right angle in his forearm. To the endless numbers of elderly people with so many things wrong that I take up pages and pages writing it all down. To the motorbiker, who had been hit by a car, who ended up getting 8 stitches from me in his elbow and knee. Love it.