Exams in Parenting

Over the last 4 weeks on Obs+Gynae the mothers I've seen can be basically drawn up into two groups. Firstly, there are the thirty-something married ladies who may have waited a little too long to start a family, but otherwise are in the best possible situation, both medically and socially, to raise children. They were both thankfully the majority of the case load, and the most enjoyable to learn from.

And then there are the younger girls. Now let me start by saying that as a general rule, getting pregnant young is not something that I can criticise. The body is built to conceive in the early twenties, and plenty of people are perfectly well adjusted to have kids at that age.

Unfortunately, the real world is a different place. It seems that by some morbid irony, those same girls that don't have the common sense to use contraception properly end up with the most responsiblilty, in a baby. I can't use specific examples, of course, but some of the pregnant girls we saw in the Early Pregnancy and Ante Natal clinics astonished me with their attitudes. They turned down simple, possibly life-saving tests and missed important appointments on the weakest of pretexts, sometimes reducing even the wise old consultants to blank, stunned expressions with the risks they were taking for such petty reasons.

When I took histories from them they commonly smoked copiously, were proud of cutting back the booze to a few bottles a week, and had little or no knowledge of the mechanics of what was going on inside them. And the amount of times I finished talking to a pregnant lady whilst her other children bickered around her feet, only to return to her notes and find that she was younger than me, were too many to mention.

Maybe I'm more angry about it because abuse of babies always seems to be in the news. For example, take the vegan couple who unwittingly killed their baby by exclusively feeding it soya milk and apple juice. Words can't express how stupid these people were to subject their child to their extreme beliefs. You don't need to be a doctor (or an average medical student) to realise that your baby will suffer greatly from living by a set of principles wholly unsuitable for basic development. Nor do you need qualifications to realise that although hospitals may have more "germs" than your bathtub at home, they also have more trained professionals than your bathtub too, and hence it might have been a better idea to go in for the birth.

And what about the herion addict who gave his baby methadone to stop him crying? It beggars belief. News just in, you idiot, babies cry. They cry when they want something, they cry when they don't. They cry all the time. But you're supposed to have the maturity and knowledge to cope with it without giving it Class A drugs.

The easiest argument these people have is that I'm at medical school, and I'm exposed to all this knowledge about pregnancy and parenting which they don't have the opportunity to see. Wrong. I do 4 weeks of Obs+Gynae, and in comparison they have a fetus inside them for 9 months, when they have the chance to ask a horde of professionals every question they possibly can about babies and their care. And if they have any sense they'd have been learning about it whilst they were planning it too, although this genuinely might not always be possible. It's not opportunity that they fail to benefit from, it's common sense.

Anyway, seeing as how you have to pass exams to do absolutely everything bar raise a child these days, I thought I'd advocate a quick multiple choice paper, preceded by an algorithm, just to check that you're up to the task. Here we go.









1. Which foodstuff provides your baby with absolutely essential nutrients, without which it stands a significantly higher chance of becoming ill or developing a low IQ?

a) cow's milk or powdered baby milk

b) whatever you happen to be eating, blended or chopped up

c) breast milk

d) lager if my current partner offers it around



2. Your baby is crying. What do you do?

a) comfort it regardless of whether it needs anything or not (unconditional love)

b) ignore it until it shuts up, it's just been fed and we're watching Big Brother

c) give it a hit of premium crack

d) scream at it in a rage displaying my total lack of character and ability



3. You're pregnant and suddenly get headaches, eye problems, tummy pain and you can feel your heart beating hard. The midwife said that if this happens you should come in RIGHT AWAY. What do you do?

a) come in RIGHT AWAY so that I don't have fits and die

b) take 3 hours then laugh off a chastising from the midwife (I've seen it).

c) don't worry about it, doctors are always wrong in the news

d) Decide after Celebrity Chef Idol on Ice finishes.

Don't have Kittens

I'll be posting less frequently for a while because of revision, and the apparent shortage of things that piss me off.
Chill out, I'll be back soon.

Capital Punishment, or "Legalised Murder"

Hey, seeing as I have nothing more apt to write about, I'm going to do my best to sincerely criticise one of the staunch policies utilised by two of my favourite countries, America and China. Also, before I forget, good job for polluting our atmosphere with all those greenhouse gases and ozone depleting substances guys, just great work.
Back on track, I want to talk about how moronic capital punishment really is. I admit, at face value, it seems like a considerable option. Someone kills another person, the punishment is them dying as well. 1+1=2. Well, okay, let's look at the specific arguments that pro-capital punishment lobbyists have come up with.

1. Punishment

Fine, this seems fair. Death is a pretty nasty punishment. Or is it? Think about it, a few days or weeks of awful fear, and then...nothing. Because you're dead. Being dead isn't a punishment, or a reprieve, it's nothing. When you're dead, you don't feel anything. So it's not really a punishment at all. I admit, the death of the victim will deny them their future, and all associated pleasures, but the death of the criminal won't be denying him a great life, will it? The alternative (which I condone) is life imprisonment (parole is subjective). That, compared to a bit of fear and 50 years rotting in the ground, is a considerably greater degree of punishment.

2. Safety of the Public

Another feasible point, if you happen to live in the 1800's and don't have a justice system that is perfectly capable of keeping the public safe by locking the perpetrator up in prison for a long time. But I suppose just killing the guy costs a lot less, so hell, let's do that.

3. Retribution (revenge)

Let's not sugar the pill by calling it retribution, a major argument for the death penalty is revenge. That guy killed your brother/son/friend, so you should be able to kill him back. Well, if anyone has a better example of Christians picking out Bible passages to suit their feelings, let me know. Usually it's "turn the other cheek", or "thou shalt not kill", but whenever it suits them they break out the Old Testament "eye for an eye" shit. What happened to forgiveness? I know it isn't easy, but for God's sake if you advocate killing someone you're just as bad as he was.

4. Deterrence

Give me a break. Despite the fact that innumerable studies show that having a death penalty doesn't put people off killing each other, the alternative of life imprisonment isn't much of a better option. If someone has a gun in their hand and someone they want to kill on the other end, they aren't going to be weighing up the subtle differences between spending the rest of their life in a wooden box in the ground or a 10' x 6' box above the ground.

5. No possibility of Rehabilitation.

Listen, I've seen a man in prison who killed another man over 30 years ago, as a florid racist and homophobe. Now, after nearly half a century in prison, he want to be paroled so that he can further his interest in book binding. No one person is constant, and just because the circumstances they found themselves in that led to them killing someone occurred, it doesn't mean that it will happen again.

Look, murderers need to be punished. Hell yes, of course they do. I just think that there are better ways to punish them than to murder them. Honestly, in this "civilised" society, can we not find a way to teach our offenders the error of their actions and encourage them to change their ways? I know, it sounds like a sermon, but come on. There's something about death that makes me think that it shouldn't be induced by anyone, for any reason. No crime, no matter how awful, deserves death. Every single aim of capital punishment can be attained to further and more efficient extent by keeping the offender alive.

As for those countries which use the death penalty for non-fatality related crimes, such as drug-trafficking, homosexuality, or "political deviance", I have a message for them. If you're doing this in the name of a God, then here's some good luck from me. Because if there is a God, you're damn sure going to need luck when he judges your disgusting, pathetic, warped selves.

Eurovision. Enough Said.

Yes, it's that time again, when every country in Europe works up a great big figurative belch and throws the musical equivalent of a torrent of fetid air wafting across our screens.
At first glance, I thought that Eurovision was still a good old-fashioned competition in which votes were awarded for garish homosexuality, completely tone deaf singing and horrendously vile colour clashing outfits. And that would've been fine. I could've switched it off half way through the first song and stumbled upon the result on the internet the next day, as usual.
The fact that the favourite was a Ukrainian transvestite coated in tin foil with an oversized Christmas star on it's head doesn't even make me blink. I say it, and not he or she, because to be perfectly honest I couldn't tell if it was male or female. Either way I wouldn't leave it in charge of my kids (if I had any). The only entry I saw that was non-homosexual to any extent was the Turkish entry, sung by a man radiating so much pent-up patriarcy that you wouldn't be surprised if his hobbies including slaughtering goats and slapping his wife.
But the irritating thing is that the whole thing is a pointless farce, because every country votes for the countries that border it, give or take a few exceptions. Wogan said before the voting began, Sweden, Norway and Finland would scratch each other's backs, and so would the ex-Soviet bloc. Even Ireland and the UK swap votes, in a vague silent gesture of Anglophone solidarity. Exceptions occur when on the rare occasion a country has a undeniably shite entry, or when a country in generally unpopular in a political sense.
Cue Britain's entry. The rest of Europe couldn't give a toss if we got up on stage and sung about flight attendants, football hooliganism, crack addiction or the ten commandments, the only thing they're interested in is the fact that we bombed the crap out of Iraq with that cretin Bush leading the way.
And thus the problem arises. I can switch off Eurovision, but when I go abroad I can't switch off the fact that everyone thinks I'm a staunch racist who eats oil for breakfast and shits greenhouse gases and toxic waste. Cheers for the national perception Tony.
In fact, without Wogan's perfect comedy timing as he antagonises every word of the unsurprisingly androgynous Finnish hosts, it might have been a total waste of the ten minutes I spent watching it.

Magners: The Drink of Sheep

Two years ago, did you ever see anyone drinking cider with ice cubes in it?
That's because the ice melts, waters down a previously manly drinking experience, and generally gets in the way of the mechanics of sipping anyway.
Until Magners started brainwashing everybody with their blatant propaganda. It tastes like every other cider, but because it's been on TV and is instantly recognisable, people suddenly love it. And just as the adverts suggest, all the bleached blonde blazer-loving ex-public school sheep can't resist loading up the glass with half a tonne of ice.
Where I come from, the only things that should be found floating in your cider are the remnants of apples, the odd drowned dormouse or two, and a thick sediment of solid masculinity.
Whenever I see yet another yuppie late-middle-age corporate sheep slap his hooves down on the bar and order another Magners, "with ice", I laugh on the inside.
I'm not sure if it's the cunning way that the company displays their bottles as leaping out of the water and flying through the air like salmon (the mark of a better tasting cider), or simply their audacity at trying to convince me that I'd be better off drinking their piss water than a half quart of whisky, but either way it's just another good example of how brilliant people are at being unwittingly influenced.
Honestly, if Magners told you it was cool to slice off your little fingers and drop them into your glass for an "extra-fleshy taste", people would start turning up to pubs with meat cleavers.

I Hate Paris Hilton

It's my least imaginative title ever. I tried to think of a more interesting one for ages, but nothing else could quite cut it for accuracy.
You see, every time that stupid cow does anything it pisses me off. Her head is so far up her own arse she should actually be choking. Here's hoping.
I like to give people a chance, but honestly, she's the most repulsive person I've ever heard of. First, she polluted my television with that genocide, "The Simple Life". I assume the title referred to her mental capacity, because it took her approximately two seconds to come across as an arrogant dim-witted bitch who treats honest hard working people like shit.
But hey, I'm a forgiving guy, I hoped it might just be her way of coping with growing up under the media spotlight. Then straight after her second series of genre-massacring crap (none of which I watched, I enjoy my sanity) she got caught drink driving. Whoops, well that's a bit silly. I know there must be something in the Constitution that protects your right to bear arms, fight for your homes, drink as much as you physically can and pilot a tonne-heavy piece of metal around the streets of L.A., but to me it just sounded a bit foolish.
Oh well, we all make mistakes. But most of us don't do it again. And again. And most of us don't try to defend ourselves in court by telling the judge that the only reason we get caught over and over again is because the police continually pull us over to try to chat us up. I'm not kidding, she actually said that. Apparently, the officers all admire her nauseatingly anorexic, plain, featureless figure and they can't resist her dry, glazed, acne ridden face, so they pull her over on the weakest of pretexts.
Yeah, I can understand that, maybe they heard her cool slogan, "That's Hot", and were hypnotically entranced by her mystery. Wake up you stupid cow, you can't own a two word phrase that's already used virtually every day by 90% of people. Obviously she disagrees, because she tried to get it copyrighted.
Add that to the music "career" she assumed she could have just because daddy owns a few hotels, and you're beginning to get a more rounded picture of the limits of human stupidity. Sure, you can buy music, but not a voice that doesn't sound like a dog being raped by a power drill. Even Britney knows that.
But there's more. One of her other defensive arguments was that she thought her driving license probation had already finished. Why did she think that? Because she openly admitted that she never reads anything that she signs, and never opens her post. Hmmm. Not so much a defensive argument as admitting to being a total cretin, is it? If I never open my gas bills, it doesn't mean I get free gas. Stupid bint.
One last thing, before I explode with frustrated anger at the levels of arrogant sanctimony that people can reach. Her friends have started a petition to save her from jail. I know it sounds a bit lame, but it must be official, because it's on MySpace. Apparently her air headed bimbo friends have seen Clueless and Sweet Valley High too many times and think that you can avoid punishment for a serious crime if you ask nicely, flutter your eyelashes and point out how sorry you are.
Well, you can't. I hope they lock her up until she realises that she's a dumb irritating slag with no discernible skills, attractive features or redeeming traits. Hopefully, that will be never.

White Men Can't Jump (or do Medicine)

For those of you that didn't know, I'm part of an "ethnic minority". On Friday last week, for the millionth time on my course, I found myself sitting in a group of about 8 medics, only one of whom was male, and only one of whom was white. They were both me. For some unknown reason, white guys aren't doing medicine as much as they used to.
I can understand the guy bit. Girls work harder, girls are more conscientious, girls are more meticulous, girls chat more rubbish, and so on, and so they've ended up filling 60% of the slots at the very least, just like every other degree course barring Auto Mechanics and Synchronised Farting. No problems there, and between you and me they'll probably be better doctors anyway for the most part.
And I have no problem with the large numbers of non-white students doing medicine here either- in principle. I know a lot of the Muslim guys on the course, and a few other guys from India and other parts of the world. In most cases, they're as committed and intelligent as the average medic, and fit in really well with the whole state of things here. It's quite possibly the tough work ethic of their different culture that got them here over the countless applications of lazy white boys like myself, and they deserve their place here.
But just a few students, their circumstances piss me off a little. And before you break out the megaphones and start crying racist, I'm talking about as many white students as non-white here.
There are more than a few people who speak broken English, know next to nothing about the culture of the typical patient, and always seem to be giving moronic answers to the most basic questions during rounds. It reeks of suspicion, and whether the reason for their appearance on the list of successful applicants was aided by love or money, I don't like it much. There were thousands of people who craved a place here, and they got denied.
I know the Medical School has to make money somehow, sometimes by taking paying students from abroad, and I know that the system of application here involves no formal interview, leaving a small chance of a few unsuitable candidates slipping through the net, but it can't be too hard to ensure that the 200 people who train here are actually good enough to do so.
Anyway, it won't matter now that Labour have started leaving piles of junior doctors unemployed.

The Great Vanishing Act, and Betting on Babies

Paul Daniels could make elephants disappear from a crowded stage. David Blaine can levitate, and can make a playing card of your choice appear instantly in a bottle. Houdini could escape from a submerging casket whilst simultaneously removing 3 pairs of unbreakable handcuffs.
But they've got nothing on me. I can pull off the most incredible piece of magic that you'll ever have seen. I can make entire swathes of knowledge vanish in a microsecond. Months of learning, into thin air. The entire learning process of the third year removed from my head in one swift blow.
Psychiatry, gone. Paediatrics, gone. Primary health care, missing. Respiratory, AWOL. Gastroenterology, presumed dead. As for clinical skills like examining a patient, or showing them how to use inhalers, or even talking to them, I resemble a drunken Teletubby trying to hail a taxi. I'm not slick at it, that's for sure.
In case you hadn't guessed, exams are round the corner once again. The 8th consecutive year of exams for me, if you count pointless exercises like SATs and mocks, and the 6th year by any body's standards. It seems like yesterday when I got my AS Level results back, but it was the best part of 4 years ago. I've never been a big fan of exams (who is?), and that's partly due to my increasingly common tendency to forget things very quickly. I often find myself checking the ward board for a patient's name 5 seconds after I saw it. And to think at 6th Form I could remember an entire textbook for revision.
It doesn't help that the last few weeks before our slender revision period are taken up by some of the most intense attachments to date. Right now I'm on Obs+Gynae. I admit, I'm not your textbook "baby person", although I do occasionally catch myself mindlessly smiling at the baby when I should be listening to a doctor or watching the surgeons close up after a Cesarean.
In fact, babies have recently become interesting to me for another reason.
In theatre yesterday, as the newborn baby was being passed from the surgeon to the midwife after the Cesarean, I lent in and asked for clarification from the doctor, "a boy or a girl?".
"Boy", said the surgeon. I quietly pump my fist and mouth "Yes!".
It isn't my baby, of course not. I'm not related to it, and it's not even my patient, I'm only a student. But my friend and I have opened a book on the predicted sex of the baby, and I'd staked a quid on the lucky little thing having a Y chromosome. Easiest pound I ever earnt. And think of it like this, that child's first act in this world was to make me money. He is a winner, I can tell. Unfortunately, using that premise makes the girl that was delivered an hour later a loser, but I can live with that. Win some, lose some.